Utterly Human is an exhibition of new paintings by Inbal Nissim, a painter driven by the intuitive. Her work deals with the connection between the inner landscapes of the mind and the way those are being expressed in the material. Nissim works mainly with ink on paper or loose fabrics, her paintings explore the manifestation of the subconscious.
Inbal was born in Jerusalem, Israel in 1979 and earned her MFA (2011) as well as BFA (2006) from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design Jerusalem, from which she graduated with Honours and received several awards including the Mitchell Presser Prize for Excellence in Painting. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Australia, Israel and Germany and is represented in public and private collections.
She decided to call it ‘Utterly human’ after hearing a podcast that dealt with questions on sacred, faith, and deep longing for the metaphysical. She rebelled on the title several times. Once because of her illness, in the stormy heat of fever, all meaning had run out. And once, she sat with a friend who let her experience his artificial intelligence and it wrote an exhibition text for her, she felt distaste and disappointment over the terrible ability to express so convincingly and she wanted to cancel everything. Only the painting remained, the possibility to paint the illogicality, as much as possible.
In another moment she surrendered, to the faithful representation of chaos, of eclecticism. The gathering of data, images from life and from imagination. The buttercup flowers that decorated the room while she left the world, returning again and again. Her sleeping daughter. Her many diaries. Roman Roland’s ancient book on Beethoven with the crumbling orange velvet cover and the many quotes she took from it. A portrait of Zelda the poet, who made her hair stand on end one evening in the desert, from the excitement of how she writes and speaks to nature and appreciates everything so much. The knife that stabbed her and slices the green apples they like to eat with lemon. Gateways and windows. She believed that they are all symbols, signs that indicate, and she is just an example for a human, of which there are millions more.
Image: Inbal Nissim Physis 1 2023 ink on paper 42 x 30 cm
