The Museum of Dreams

Yehuda Poliker’s exhibition “The Museum of Dreams”, includes two series of paintings which

express a world of dream and mystery. The face, a steady reoccurring motif in his work, becomes an archetypal blueprint that appears again and again, whilst being handled differently in each of the bodies of works.

 In the series comprised of oil on canvas paintings that was created with a thin painterly language, Poliker “empties the face” and presents a variety of stains, marks and lines which allude to faces that float on a different mental plane, an infinite metaphysical realm. The faces invoke a suspenseful and mysterious scent. They are soaked in linen, obliterated, appearing unexpectedly and vanishing, whilst being absorbed into a chaotic, monochromatic world in the background, like ghosts. Stains appear and transform into faces, poured into existence through the shifts of the paint on the canvas, leaving us beholding the magical gaze projected toward us. 

The treatment of the face becomes computerized in the second series which includes colorful drawings, created with a digital graphic technique on paper. By utilizing the wonders of the computer, Poliker displays playful formal choices that include an interplay of clean lines, geometry, simplicity, and lush stains of color which culminate into flat faces within a humorous, fantastical caricature. 

The coexistence between Poliker’s artistic need to physically touch the brush and canvas, and his preoccupation with digital painting, does not distract him from his principal engagement with the face and the gaze. In both series, the faces oscillate on a plane which has two opposing poles: on one end, tension, mystery and alienation, and on the other, playfulness. The face and above all the gaze, much like the artist’s songs, do not rely on a mediating interpretation – they penetrate straight into one's soul. 

Yehuda Poliker’s artistic enterprise has been most recognized in terms of his achievements as an established and respected composer and singer. In midlife, Poliker decides to exhibit his paintings – a new step reflecting the artist’s ability to dare, and to figuratively express, “face to face“, the artist within him. 

Nurit Tal-Tenne -  Exhibition Curator 

 In many respects, Poliker’s autodidactic artistic activity resembles that of the  Jewish composer and painter Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951), who had a significant influence on 20^th century music by practically changing conventions of traditional tonal harmony. Schönberg referred frequently in his writings to the idea of freedom of creativity, and the refusal to lose oneself in any doctrine. Schönberg was a member of Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) group, and a close friend of Wassily Kandinsky, who inspired him to become involved with abstract art, free from representation of reality. A distinct feature in Schönberg’s works was also paintings of faces with an emphasis on the gaze. Amongst them were self-portraits, portraits of his friends as well as anonymous portraits – created through single brush strokes, alongside caricatured portraits.

 As Schönberg wrote in 1938:

"I never saw faces, but because I looked into peoples’ eyes, only their gazes. This is the reason why I can imitate the gaze of a person. A painter, however, grasps with one look the whole person – I, only his soul…”*