Lia Tolchinsky
On Place and Time
Lia Tolchinsky
Urban Art, Atmosphere Painting
The City and its Way of Life
Paintings expressing a sense of space, evoking a sense of nostalgia and belonging to a certain place, one that is imbued with the spirit of man and all his baggage of physical and mental experiences.
A journey that conjures memories, and a yearning for complex simplicity, for noisy silence and an orderly disorder.
A longing for sounds and smells, for buildings and houses and people.
Tolchinsky manages to convey this atmosphere of place and time through her body of work, allowing the viewer to enter her inner world.
Laundry drying on a clothesline is a symbol of a disappearing way of life, the garbage cans reminding us of life without technology that takes over daily life, taking us away from the neighborhood, from the street, from the corner kiosk and grocery store.
The colors and perspective convey a sense of physical depth and also point to Tolchinsky's deep understanding of how to express the artist's feelings to her viewers and back again.
“In the Ma’aserot tractate, the Mishnah deals with the Halachic placement of fruit, on a tree growing on the border between domains, where its ‘essence’ (roots) is in one place, while its ‘location’ is across the border:
If a fig tree… stood in the Land [of Israel] and overhung outside the Land, or, if it were standing outside the Land, but overhung the Land, it goes according to where the roots. And regarding houses in walled cities everything is decided according to the roots. However, regarding cities of refuge, we [also] follow the location of the branches. And [also] regarding Jerusalem, we [also] follow the location of the branches.”
— Mishna, Ma’aserot 3, 10
“Urban art does not look down upon people, it speaks to them at eye level. It reaches a common ground among all, and thus it touches all the city’s inhabitants. Rather than conveying deep messages, it usually makes do with a lack of aesthetics, with uniqueness, with the interest it arouses, with the positive emotions it brings forth in a variety of people. The most important criterion for good modern art is its degree of integration within the urban landscape, so it does not hamper the design of the city yet attracts positive attention.”
(Bituy College)
Rami Azzam, curator and I.C.U.Art director
CAN-ISRAELI ART REALITY ISSUE 55