Sigal Ben-David
Sigal Ben-David's work is an investigation into the role of objects in constructing and deconstructing the narratives around which we organize our lives. Ben-David’s rigorously composed images speak of the orders we create that often serve to forge even greater disorders. Found objects reflect a curatorial instinct to preserve, categorize and revalorize. Emptiness lends value to everyday things that we use to structure and define identity. In a world that has been emptied out, opportunities are multiplied for the creation of new meanings. But are these new meanings implied or projected? Perhaps as a result of her upbringing in Israel, her images rigorously examine the role of a home and its absence - in how we structure and define our social and political identity.
Ben-David treats her work as landscapes - though the word is released from its traditional signification. Rather, landscape is here extended to mean the totality of ways in which we arrange both the natural and artificial aspects of our habitations, and their significance in how we conceive of ourselves.
In her more recent works the landscapes were created in the studio by reconstructing subject matter and substance. Ben-David’s images are confronting with the abstract aesthetic structures that underlie the natural and artificial environments, while experimenting with forms, shapes, textures, patterns and substance, through which she generates a dialogue between photography and Fine Art, conceptual rigor and playfulness, representation and abstraction. A reminder that what we are looking at is not reality per se, but a reality the artist created.
This work entitled "My Playground of Others’ Memories" poetically investigates the intersections between memories, narrative and forms, through looking at our habit of accumulating 'things'. Seeking to articulate the nuances of relations embedded in the relationship between the inanimate objects that surround us, that we collect and use in our daily lives and their role in forming our memories, while experimenting with forms, shapes, textures, patterns and substance, through which we generate a dialogue between Photography and Fine Art, conceptual rigor and playfulness, representation and abstraction.
By presenting composite, and manipulated images of trivial objects De-familiarized of their functional properties and removed from their larger schemes of meaning, we explore objects as containing a profusion of meanings, while confronting with the abstract aesthetic structures that underlie the natural and artificial environments. Rather than creating a traditional storyline or narrative, this work reveals intricate and enigmatic mise-en-scènes that prompt personal reflections on memories, and invite the viewers to construct their own narrative.
This is the first collaboration between Artist Les St. Leon and Photographer Sigal Ben-David in installation and photography. “My Playground of Others’ Memories” has been completed between 2014 and 2017. This new series comprises 10 color photographs shot in medium
format.
Sigal Ben-David was born in 1973 in Israel. She graduated of Camera Obscura School of Art, Tel-Aviv, Israel, majoring in Photography, in 2009. And was a participant in an Art program - Digital Media Major in 2008-2009 at the Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology and the Arts, Tel-Aviv, Israel. Her recent exhibitions include “Through Compassionate Eyes”, The Charter Oak Cultural Center, Hartford, CT, Group (2018) “Memories”, LoosenArt Magazine / MILLEPIANI Art Space, Rome, Italy, Group (2018); “Under 18 Inches”, Limner Gallery, Hudson, NY, Group (2017); "Wish You Were Here 16", A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Group (2017); "Undetermined Landscape", Two Moon Art House, Brooklyn, NY, Solo (2013); "DOF", Tokyo International Forum, Tokyo, Japan, Group (2011); "DOF", Architects House Gallery, Tel-Aviv-Jaffa, Israel, Group (2011); "Preservation Jar", Artness Gallery, En Shemer, Israel, Duo (2011); "No.Where.Else", Centre Culturel Français, Nazareth, Israel, Group (2010); "Woman 3000", Garage Gang, Kiev, Ukraine, Group (2010); Tel Hai Open Museum of Photography, Tel Hai, Israel, Group (2010); "Untitled", Ha’Chalalit Gallery, Tel-Aviv-Jaffa, Israel, Group (2009). Sigal Ben-David lives and works in New York City, NY.
