Review by Uzi Zur (April 26, 2013)

Published in Haaretz, Culture and Literature, "Closing One Eye".

Gilad Keidar is an artist of pure truth, without any character of falsehood or excess. In his last paintings there is poetic tension between the basis of figurative painting and the abstract painting that tries to be etched onto it. These landscapes are painted in warm red, seeming like sketching. The expressive touches of the almost dry brush are collected into a somewhat monastic landscape.

The exposed canvas shows the southern Tel Aviv landscape. Then Keidar begins to paint across these landscapes with touches of black. In the first paintings, the touches seem more like Chinese calligraphy that protects the red landscape below and acts as though it tries to adapt to it. But then Keidar breaks free and, as if attacking the figurative, to annihilate it in a black, abstract storm. Only bits and pieces of the landscape below emerge here and there.


* The translation is a summary of the written text in Hebrew