A FOOT, TOPS
Raw Art gallery, Tel Aviv
Curator: Leah Abir
March - May 2017
"A Foot, Tops" solo show at RawArt Gallery encompasses painting on canvas, on wood, and on paper, as well as sculptures and installations. The paintings are characterized by intense colors, direct materiality, and geometric cuts and angles. They feature faces, masks, body parts, signs that are both eyes and fish, and vases that are both vessels and bodies.
The exhibition is akin to a colony of sorts, with different characters populating it - hung unstretched canvases and forms functioning as containers, tents and pyramids. These forms frame the figures while breaking, dismantling, and blending into them.
While "A Foot, Tops" has been preceded by studio work, it is similar to Hajaj's previous exhibitions by being formed out of an on-site practice, thereby relying on time- and site-specific intuitions and insights. Through juxtapositions of objects, shapes, and colors, Hajaj brings the mind and the eye into play, composing different relations and stories. In this sense, Hajaj's paintings are based on actions similar to the artist's collages and sculptures. In every medium, fractions and parts are connecting to form new beings – hybrids that inhabit a certain space, where they continue to grow limbs, angles, and appendices.
Colors, 2017, Oil Sticks on Paper, 78x108cm
