Zygo

b. 1968

ZYGO iconographical research in the field is generally perceived as a problematic area, both illustratively and academically. In art history and in the field of contemporary art, iconographical research usually attempts to elucidate the evolution of shapes, images and symbols and their sources. Researchers seek to uncover the source of these images and, moreover, the changes and reversals that have taken place in them over time. When artists utilise accepted schemes from the past, the research is targeted at indicating and explaining the complex twists that the artists manifest in these representations. The academic engagement with iconography thereby reveals values based on facts, such as would not be revealed without the historical-iconographical discussion. The artworks of ZYGO (professional name), a multidisciplinary artist, enter into an artistic dialogue that lies beyond the academic world, and raises the importance of opening up a way to a new reading, offering a greater challenge than merely describing the historical progression of an image or a defined and restricted way of representation. The technique behind a creation is no longer significant or a focal point of interest – everything can be documented nowadays on camera or a high-quality printer to the reality level of an actual painting, with the more that technology advances, the less significance there is to an act of realism in painting. This disconnection from the academic world regarding the discussion of visual culture is given a new look in the interpretive dialogue of artworks, creating a new understanding regarding the development of the painting and the experience it embodies. ZYGO employs two central motifs familiar to every visitor to his studio: the motif of the screw and the motif of unique, small, colourful Swarovski crystals, whose use reveals the tension created in the painting between the revealed and the concealed, between hardness and softness, between light and shadow. ZYGO uses his painting as an gesture to the Swarovski crystals (in Hebrew the word “gesture” is connected etymologically to the word “experience”). These two motifs – the screw and the Swarovski crystals – enhance the viewer’s experience to that of experiencing the painting as the artist wishes his art o be experienced. The inspiration behind the screw motive in ZYGO’S paintings derives from the collection of photos by the photographer Alfons Himmelreich – a close-up of a screw from the 1940s, which extolled the beauty of the metal and of the object, despite its aggressive and alienated image, which for many years had served as a symbol of industrial progress in the country during that period. ZYGO screws the screws directly onto the canvas of his paintings, with a colourful crystal affixed to each screw head, together creating a new work of art. ZYGO alters the painting in this way from two-dimensional to three-dimensional, and adds movement through these screws creating a play of light and shadow with the hypnotic colourful crystals. The connection of the screw and crystals to the painting constitutes a new link in places in which one medium touches upon the other and creates a desire to sense and experience the artwork, its representation and meaning, in a multi-sensorial way. ZYGO offers in his paintings versatile and flexible readings, making art accessible to all – everyone is eligible to experience art. At times he challenges his earlier paintings, previously exposed to the public, and elicits in each of them a sense of vital movement. His simultaneous play with hard and soft materials, with screws and fragile delicate crystals, creates interest from the very fact of their connection together on the surface of the painting. Movement is dominant and extremely prominent in ZYGO’S works. The screws resemble a field of wheat stirred by the wind, soft and fine, as if the iron has become something flexible and light, replacing coldness and rigidity. The wind blows on the painting as if on a field, seeking to breathe into it life, depth, dimensionality and richness. The sparkle from the crystal stones provides added value to the painting in that each stone is individually related to, as if it were the only one in a group. Each stone is of a different colour, differing also in the angle, but their placement together, next to one another, offers the illusion of an harmonic collective group, moving together over the surface of the painting. The crystals help to enhance the meaning of ‘together’: “I love to work with Swarovski crystals because of their play with light and colourfulness; to examine each one individually and to look at all of them together inspires me to know that it is possible to have big dreams.” ZYGO’S ability to see movement in each crystal and his incorporation of them onto the screws, lends the screws on the painting a softness and flexibility. They receive new meaning, moving in rhythm and becoming one with the crystals. ZYGO’S artworks bring a whole new approach to painting, while the sense of movement created by the screws and play of light of the crystals is what awakes a new interest by the viewer in the painting and gives it depth and new meaning. ZYGO creates a world beyond the body of the painting, a world that draws the attention of the viewer. It enables the viewer to perceive in the artwork not only a concealing shadow, but also silhouettes that give presence to the emptiness of the painting – floating and creating spaces that are open and free.