Ido Bar-El (b. 1959, Israel) uses discarded and found objects as the basis of his paintings and sculptures. Old street signs, posters, furniture parts and fabric are “cleaned” in a process that removes their limbs or joints, and then reworked with the painter’s physical gestures –spraying, rubbing and inserting industrial paints and materials into them. Bar-El’s ability to sacralise the mundane and articulate a painterly language rooted in action places him beside the most important artists working today. Bar-El is the recipient of the 2014 Rappaport Prize for an Established Israeli Painter. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions in Israel and abroad.
Related exhibition: Potent Wilderness
Ido Bar-El, Untitled, 1995, oil on tin
Ido Bar-El, Untitled, 2009, Spray paint and industrial paint on American plywood