Ron Amir (Israel, 1975) tells in a passionate way contemporary stories, stories in which he’s not going atrocities and quirks out of the way, stories full of contradictions, engaging stories, stories that do not measure and that, especially in his drawings, could continue almost endless. He does so in a figurative expressionist style which colors represent content. He pulls the viewer, get him his story and let him share the experience.
After his national service he left his native country of Israel in his early twenties. With a clear mission: to become a painter. Via Rome, where he specialized in the restoration and copying of old masters, he went to Amsterdam, “because I distinctly wanted to go to the roots of Mondrian”.
Moving to The Netherlands meant more to him. Rome was a traditional environment, where the presence of the pope and the Catholic Church were strongly present. ’The move to the Netherlands was the moment I left the tradition’. Amsterdam, and later Groningen and Rotterdam, offered me the chance for a new start. For me this is the land of Jeroen Bosch and Mondrian, and everything in between.”
Amir contemplates life from an imaginary point somewhere floating above the earth. Like he is on another planet and try to pin down the essence of human existence.
The works consist of human figures, objects and spaces, but there is also room for abstract forms, demons and deformed creatures. The use of such elements and figures allow him to approach reality from an alternative perspective.
The large charcoal drawings depict a world that touches on reality while appearing surreal and absurd. Spaces and backgrounds are disfigured reflecting the subjects state of anguish and suffering. Objects also play a role with a deformed car and an elaborate underwater staircase which pose many question leading to ever more possible interpretations.
Political reality penetrates Amirs work, resembling surreal horror scenes from another world but find their origin in the mundane. The images come from merged newspaper clippings of atrocities, ranging from protesters setting themselves on fire to the photographed remains of suicide bombers. The work stimulates appall and dread with images of death and destruction, these however are not born of conscious, the horror in the works is a concentration of these violent forces of human nature. What could be compared with what we exposed to in the ever advancing culture of interactive media.
