ELLA  ALTER  - Harmony of Chaos and Apocalypse/ Nili Navo

A visit in the United States to the site of Yellowstone Park's geysers, a location where the thin crust of planet earth doesn't succeed in confining the inferno bubbling  beneath it, constitutes the inspiration for the series of works Thin Crust. "I wanted to make tangible by means of materials the thinness, brittleness and temporariness [transience] of our existence on earth," says the artist. Truly the works reflect the internalization of traumatic events and give formal expression to the distress and fears that accompany our existence.

Ella Altar has opened a Pandora' Box and from all directions the calamities of human grief and suffering close in on the viewer. The apocalypse levels its glance at the viewer and strikes his senses. The overwhelming disasters of Nature threaten to invade from the works into the space of the room and to drown, burn and smash the  visitors at the exhibition. Man-made disasters threaten to kill and obliterate. He who attempts to comprehend the catastrophic disasters in Japan may see in Ella Alters work, which was created before the disaster, a bitter prophecy and might dwell on the prayer which includes the words: … "who will live and who will die; who will die at his predestined time and who before his time; who by water and who by fire, who by sword, who by beast, who by famine, who by thirst, who by storm, who by plague…"

Choice of the materials and technique reflect the artist's anxieties. Ella Alter uses plywood panels taken from containers and crates. Each panel has its unique texture, line pattern and knots, stemming from the natural growth of the tree. Each panel is imperfect, broken and stained as a result of its travel in time and space. Each panel has its special character, each plank its life story. The artist added to a portion of the planks an

imaginar "history" for the wood, but a true one for the artist as in the work Red Color carrying black  seals bearing this name, or the seals of non-existent– lands of desire in

the work Neverland.

 The wooden planks constitute a basis for this series of works that is covered with transparent sheets of paper  imprinted with enlarged, processed photographs that  the artist shot in Yellowstone Park. The paper sheets are fastened to the wooden panel with a hand or industrial pneumatic stapler. The act of joining is violent and the result seems like crude stitches of an inexperienced surgeon. The collage of the semi-transparent sheets constitutes a thin crust that may reveal or hide the authenticity of the planks beneath it. The artist adds other layers to these, making use of a recurring  pattern and

painting it in various colors (cf. in works such as Nevermore).

For example, the ravens are not specific ravens  each having a separate "personality" but they reflect the concept of the essence of " raveness "). The repetitiveness of the patterns enhance the symbolism.  The additional descriptive free hand touch sharpens the viewer's sense of the apocalyptic as in the target that drips paint in the work And They Shall Convulse and Shatter Me and  a skull in Save the Golden Donkey or the painting of the withered white lily in the work, A Long Time Has Passed Since Then.

A portion of the works are embellished with patterns of decorative prints perhaps in order to soften the dread and emphasize the banality of fear and terror. These bring about the dimming of the sensation of horror and feeling of discomfort in face of the strange incongruity.

The artist also freed hope from inside her box. In each of her works is threaded a golden line. From the bed of pain and ruin sprout clean light golden leaves of renewal and growth.

The optimism in the work is minute, modest and bashful; but nevertheless, it sparkles.

The sources of inspiration and the relevancies of exhibition reflect a wide spectrum taken from the  world of Ella Alter, beginning with the forces of Nature that  are expressed  in geothermic  phenomena of Yellowstone Park via the world of flora and fauna in all its pain and comfort and ending with facets of the cultural world. The artist uses Judeo-Christian philosophic and religious sources in relationship to literature and poetry and corresponds with the world of variegated plastic art. All these join together in a unique series which  embodies  a rich and crystallized personal language. The exhibition demands deep observation from the viewer: seeing the whole and descending into the details in order to penetrate through the various levels to the hints and the manifold associations that can be found in every piece.

Thin Crust is a body of work that creates a symphony of splotches, lines and colors within which echo chaos and the apocalypse. These Ella Alter has succeeded in refining and giving them an artistic expression to horror that is not figurative. Harmony and disharmony combine, rendering formal esthetics to her expression, but together with this, the artist leaves the viewer a spark of hope, and does it well without falling into clichés. The exhibition, as in all good art, leaves the observer with material for thought.