MAGAZINE
Between Flesh and Line: Interview with Artist Noam Omer
Shortly after the opening of his new solo exhibition “The Enchanted Forest” at Artists’ House Tel Aviv, we sat down with artist Noam Omer to speak about his practice, rooted in the physicality of the body, the intensity of line, and the search for a living, almost tactile presence within the image. Through large-scale works and evolving compositions, the exhibition brings together mythological figures, personal visions, and a persistent exploration of how drawing, repetition, and material can give form to emotion and transform it into something almost alive.
Can you recall a moment or encounter that shaped the way your art developed, especially your focus on the body and its presence?
I discovered the power of art when I was 16, at an exhibition of Lucien Freud’s art at the Tel-Aviv Museum. I believe this defined the most important lines in my artistic development.
I was shocked by Freud’s depiction of large masses of flesh. Faces and bodies were heavy with living matter, its weight, the feeling that it was about to decay, strength and frailty at once. I was fascinated by the monuments of fat that he created, especially in his two enormous models.
From that moments, I went on searching for ways to build emotion out of the lines and volumes of the body. I think this remains my central emphasis today. An attempt to kick my figures into life, into an almost shocking living texture, is the main direction of my art.
What lies at the core of this exhibition, and how did you build its visual world, both in terms of imagery and scale?
This exhibition is a series of variations on the motif of the “Nephilim.” These gigantic biblical figures, the offspring of angels and women, are the mythological source of the figures in the exhibition.
I tried to create a context that would suit them, which is why I needed the large scale of the murals and the towering presence of the individual Nephilim. If I had a bigger studio, I would have made them even taller and larger.
It was important for me to place the “murals” side by side to create a panoramic effect. Some of the visitors at the opening remarked quite accurately, that they saw in the works a combination of Chagall’s eerie betrothed figures and the horror of Picasso’s Guernica. These two references were very much on my mind while creating the works.
Could you describe your working process from the initial spark through the development of the work and to its final installation in the exhibition space?
The beginning of a work is very often a vision that I have while walking. These visions are highly vivid, like hallucinations, though I never mix them up with reality.
When I come to the actual construction, I make lots of sketches, not so much of the figures themselves, as of the rhythm and texture that I want to create. One of those sketch notebooks is presented in the show.
During the actual painting, I write down instructions to myself. In the past I’d write them in slips of paper that I would pin to the wall around the actual picture. Now I use my cellphone, where, in the course of the last year and a half, when most of the works in the exhibition were created, I accumulated more than 3.000 of those instructions.
Even when a painting seems finished, it rarely is. I come back to it, sometimes a few weeks, sometimes months later, and I do a rework. Sometimes I remove some of the sections that constitute a mural and paint new ones instead. This process can sometimes continue for years, even after the work has been exhibited.
What are you currently working on, and what new materials or directions are you exploring?
I am working on a series of projects with different materials and ideas. I have a large collection of clothes, that I buy in cheap markets and paint them. I have many painted umbrellas. Also most of the furniture in my study is now painted. Maybe this will be the subject of my next show.
But I am also working with new murals and Nephilim. I think I paint on clothes to rest from the longer breath and higher concentration that I need for the murals and Nephilim. I like the format of the murals (built out of 12 sheets of fine art paper of 70-100 cm. each), and I have already started a new one.
The exhibition “The Enchanted Forest” is open until May 16 at the Artists’ House Tel Aviv.
Curators: Arie Berkowitz and Vera Pilpoul
