Ella Alter / Thin Crust

Curator:  Daniella Talmor

In Yellowstone Park, located in northwest United States, the earth's crust is extremely thin. The red-hot park sludge bubbles and incessantly spits out steam. While processes of destruction, combustion and death can be continuously observed, colorful patches, created by algae that thrive there despite the almost insupportable living conditions and heat, appear creating an aura of riveting abstract painting. Researchers believe that these algae are prehistoric forms of life from which the original fauna and flora developed. The amazing survivability of these algae in such extreme conditions touches on the dialectics between extinction and the ability of life to adapt itself to any predicament and flourish under any circumstances. Ella Alter terms this dialectic a parable of life in Israel enduring an explosive undercurrent of endless wars while at the same time excelling in building and renewal.

 Living and working in the shadow of the ongoing tension on the northern border, Alter presents in her oeuvre the brittleness of the thin crust separating cycles of wars and recovery. From the distress and fears engendered within her by the existing situation Alter has created collages based on photographs she shot of chaos in Yellowstone Park. Her exhibition Thin Crust deals with the unbreakable connection between us and the place we live in as well as the unavoidably imminent apocalypse.

The works displayed in the exhibition were created in 2007-2011 while our country seethed with security, political, social and ethical problems and the ground metaphorically bubbled. Tracing the process by which the works were formed is interesting. Alter initially printed details from her photographs onto parchment sheets which she then fashioned into collages. She attached these pieces of paper to wooden planks taken from old containers and crates, raw material worn out and marked by the use to which it had been put. In order to enhance the feeling of brittleness, Alter connected the collages to the planks using a pneumatic gun, creating the impression of surgical sutures on the brutally injured parchment sheets. She next painted the wooden planks and pieces of parchment bearing the photographed details, using diverse colors and sometimes even combining elements in silver, brass and lead together with gold leaves that, to her, signify hope.

 Alter's large works are flat paintings with no hint of horizon or season. Their time is the here and now split into discrete bits of substantiality. Fragments of the past occasionally radiate outwards from them but from behind flickers the presence of death closely linked to the striving for life. The works combine texts in Hebrew and English as integral parts of the compositions. Some of these texts are taken from the Bible and, according to the artist, intuitively engulfed her in the context of the deep historical roots of the land where we are living. The mythological past bore witness to periods during which prophets of doom arose to lead the people and the rulers, but to our regret such prophets no longer exist today. In their absence the texts of Alter pose pertinent questions.

"Lech Lecha"

For example, the work

"Lech Lecha", where the words of God's directive, sending the Patriarch Abraham to go forth in search of the Promised Land, appear on the painted wood, alluding to the possibility of leaving the Promised Land for some other place where one could plant and nurture a tree of assurance and life.

"Neverland"

 In some of the works the words create a fictitious history using titles such as "Neverland", Pandora and Narnia, while in other cases the names refer to the bitter fate of the place in question such as in the works "Nevermore", And he brake me asunder… and dashed me to pieces (Job, 16:12), "Color Red", or In "that they are there",

"that they are there"

..Also appearing alongside them are ironic terms quoting clichés intended to induce the feeling that all's well, as in the case of the title "Honey, all is honey" as well as "All is gold". 

"Honey, all is honey"

In the center of the exhibition space the artist has placed a large transport container inside which she has erected a temporary house with an address comprising her date of birth, "Tracking Number 120449". Painted on the house being transported is a white lily that at its peak of blooming resembles a Magen David, the ancient symbol of the Israeli nation.

Alter forces us to do what the best artists demand of us – observe, understand and feel. She asks us to contemplate each work while concurrently confronting the dread and fervor enveloping our history. Contemplating her works engenders a complex question: can one possibly live in such a reality? Can one cope with living with daily horrors? Alter utilizes her lyrical touch and sense of rhythm in order to prevent her and us from losing control. Thus, apart from pointing to reality, she also enables us to cope with it.

The exhibition "Thin Crust" displayed in the upper central hall of the Artists' House deals with survival and with our temporary tenuous existence in Israel. This is a spiritual journey of emigration and wandering registered on plywood and aforementioned wooden planks with perforated collages attached with aggressive stitches. The use of quotations from the Bible is reminiscent of the unending suffering over numerous generations endured by the Jewish nation in the Land of Israel. For Alter, the Sisyphean task of artistic searching is riveting, with the story always hidden under form and color. Her outlook bestows upon the present a perspective enabling things to be seen in depth.

  Daniella Talmor                                                                                  AUGUST  2013