‘Blunt Liver / Blind Arc’ is a new artist book by Shahar Yahalom printed as two inter-connected soft cover books. The ‘double’ format references the dialectic of enmeshment and estrangement which colors the drawings and sculptures she presents. This new body of work, created over the last three years, accompanies her upcoming solo show at Bat Yam Museum of Art. Glass portrait busts, both black and transparent, show two inter-connected figures – like siamese twins – re-conceiving each “head” as a series of intertwined relationships. The structure of the heads changes over time, and every few months they are recast in glass, presenting a never-ending metamorphosis reflected within the sculptural form. A second series of ‘tombs’ echoes Yahalom’s broader pre-occupation with burying and entombment. In these works the mold used to created the glass heads becomes the work itself, a tool for cloaking existing sculptures in white plaster. Rather then recreating their interiors, Yahalom uses her hands to build up the exterior layer, creating new voluminous shapes which cover the surface, as if they were buried under a layer of snow. The second book is trimmed diagonally across its corners, and presents a series of drawings made on carbon paper kept in the artists back pocket. The folding and engraving produces a symmetry of images that are multiplied differently each time and thus a composition of largely arbitrary doublings is created, which both express and mathematically trace the sculptural folding action.
Blunt Liver
Blind Arch
Printing Date: March 2022, Design by Guy Shoual, Texts by Frank Heath, Hila Cohen Schneiderman, & Tchelet Ram.
Shahar Yahalom (b.1980, Israel) received a BFA from Ha’midrasha School of Art, Israel (2006). Graduated MFA at Colombia University, New York (2014).
