Artist's Statement by Amir Shefet:

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I am an established artist based in Israel, represented by the Gordon Gallery in Tel Aviv. I have graduated from the MFA program in the Bezalel Academy of Art in 2013. My works have been exhibited in many solo and group exhibitions in Israel (among them the Israel Museum in Jerusalem). My works feature in prominent private and public collections in Israel as well as private collections in France, United states, South Africa and Austria.

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About My Works: "The other side or Kitsch"

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My paintings are based on imagery of kitsch yet they aim to penetrate and reach “the other side of kitsch”, taking those flowers, rainbows, sunsets and butterflies back to their origin, so we could see them as if for the first time way before they were overused time and again in the capitalist culture. 

The babushka dolls in my paintings are at the same time hollow yet full with infinite generations of dolls within. These playful dolls hold within them the secrets of births, deaths, family and love. they are both naïve and childish yet ironic and morbid. I guess my whole body of work surrounds that tension between shallow and profound, sweetness and fragility, irony and belief. 

Many of the flowers I paint over and over again have no stem, either slowly dying or they are just spiritual flowers with no need of water.

Above all my paintings are a celebration of the rich possibilities of paintings, from the hyper real and the trompe l’oeil to the freedom of abstract gestures, they believe in painting, they are about belief.