Take for a moment all the Davin of the crime series that are so popular in Israel. “Zinzana”. “The Arbiter”. Even “Manaich”. Everyone is trying to paint a type of male model made fearless, sharp, precise, who knows what he wants and knows how to get it. Oz Zalof, 35, artist and curatorcould have been a prime example of a man-man stereotype from such an action series, very easily and with all that implies.
Petah Tikva alleys of the end of the last century was the setting for his childhood. A sort of criminal equivalent of Cambridge. The fact that you know Rosenstein and Molner, but have never heard of the Petah Tikva market, should help you clarify the point: Zalof is an unusual character in the scene (If you visited the exhibition I curated at the end of July in the Mishlama building in Jaffa, maybe you understood something about him). He has a deep understanding of the material, greatness and enormity of soul alongside honest human love on the one hand, and on the other a hunger for success and a healthy distance from the politics of the local art scene. As a result, he is completely free to choose what he deals with and is not motivated by interests. And this is already rare in our districts.
“Sometimes art feels like stagnant water.” Oz Zalof (Photo: Arla Hatzam Boer)
“This morning I received an email: ‘Hi Oz, I’m sorry to inform you that my mother Gabriela passed away about a month ago,'” Zalof tells me about the beginning. “Gabriela Morez was a writer of poetry, short stories and comments on life. In the past she danced in various semi-professional settings. She frequently participated in independent literary evenings in homes, cafes and small institutions. When she asked me to appear in the gallery I curate she introduced herself as a ‘poet, stand-up artist and dancer.’ I photographed her in my studio in front of an audience of friends telling comedic stories, spoken word and dancing, although she danced sitting down. At her older age, it was already difficult for her to move freely, it was also difficult for her to walk. In the filmed show, she told how in her adult life she gave up dreams in order to raise children and succeed To provide for a home. She talked about ambitions of artistic work and lively movement in life. She wanted to launch a book of poetry in the gallery.
“I postponed the event for about a year, I didn’t know why to put it together, it didn’t feel urgent to me,” he continues, “and yesterday I wrote her an email: ‘Dear Gabriela – in September, at the beginning of the month, we will hold an opening event at the gallery. Maybe you will read some of your poems there? Would you like To appear with pieces of text? Whatever you choose. It’s a nice exposure and it can be beautiful.’ Amazing creators, many of whom keep all their creations to themselves, operate in a closed circle, are content with presenting.
“Art gives people a sense of value, meaning and existence in the world.” Oz Zalof (Photo: Arla Hatzam Boer)
“Sometimes art feels like standing water” he concludes. “When you have access to something of value, you must share it for it to truly come true, and get to know those who are far from this experience – more peripheral areas, older people, the majority of people. That’s also where the potential for something truly queer is found, that’s where the important effect of art happens. That’s where it is Changing life paths. I waited too long with Gabriela, I denied her something she knew how to ask for herself and I could help her achieve it. The anguish I feel now is a small and necessary punishment.”
He’s as precise as a NASA telescope. When he talks to me about community-based art, I don’t detect any hint of the kind of charm we’ve come to expect from an oriental man as he’s portrayed in the mainstream. He has no combos. He’s not davin. , with all his heart. At a young age he devoted himself to it and today he is bursting with knowledge, sensitivity and abilities in the field. From this love, to which is added phenomenal literacy, Zalof succeeds in making high art accessible to the people of Israel in places where it was considered a dirty word for decades. True, he looks like an Iraqi Tony Montana , but he talks like a folk Rembrandt. A layman talking to him will be sure that they see eye to eye. I am the proof of that.
“To go against the individual perception that eats the art from the inside”. Oz Zalof (Photo: Arla Hatzam Boer)
“My field as a creator is relational art, I mean art in which the interest is not the object but the human relationships in the work,” Zaloff explains to me. “Now I am working on a performative exhibition, a ‘Home Circle’ with mature female artists that I have been working with for more than five years, and in which we come to present an exhibition that is a theatrical action: the female artists present the works they have created in their bodies, in their stories. Each sculpture is presented by the artist to the audience with openness, Against the tendency in art to place an object and avoid explanations, this is part of a move that will happen in the near future at the Nahum Gutman Museum.
“In the course of several years of activity in which I met and worked with older artists from the fringes of Israeli art and I was involved in documenting their ambitions and frustrations. The artistic field is used to isolating the artists from each other, and is used to isolating the artist from the audience, and is used to placing all these players against each other. I want to produce Other connections, other fertility, to go against such an individualistic concept that eats art from the inside, and which causes artists more grief than benefit. The separation between art and life is a detriment to society and the quality of life it can enable. This whole thing about the genius, lonely artist, doesn’t need it. It feels out of date to me.”
At his request, I am attaching the poetry of Gabriela Maroz, which appears on the back cover of her third book called “Whispering to the Words”
You’ve never seen me dance
and not a front
how i touch
on the floor of the sky
But you always believed
that I am able
you never saw
How do I mix?
the winds of the sky
with the waltz and tango dance
You didn’t make it
Because in the whirlwind of a hurricane
You are drawn to Al Al
And you went up to the island
And you only left here
the comet’s tail
of your one-time beauty.