Hi there!
Photographer Daniel Tsal is the fourth winner of the Lauren and Mitchell Presser Photography Award for Young Israeli Photographers. This is his first exhibition in a museum.
Born in Tel-Aviv in 1985, Tsal lives and works in Tel-Aviv and Berlin. He graduated from the Fine Art Department at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and from the Frankfurt Städelschule Student Exchange Program. He has exhibited solo and in group exhibitions in galleries in Israel and abroad. Tsal's works have appeared in local and international publications and magazines.
WHEN: Opening Thursday, 19 December 2019
Credit: Damian 2019 by Daniel Tsal
The exhibition displays photographs in various sizes and techniques all depicting seemingly European youngsters, in their twenties. There are simple color prints, large-scale wallpaper prints and a monumental light box. Each creates a separate, personal world on its own. The essence is appearance and façade. The most intimate, the most baring, is exposed and frozen in time. Tsal focuses on the position, the simplest ordinary act such as removing a stain from a shirt, peeling an egg, touching up a hairdo in front of a mirror, darning a sock or walking down stairs, etc. The figures insist, by remaining on their own activities, create a total silence for themselves within the external noise. “After setting up the scene I asked the models to repeat the activity again and again, over time, in order to capture that specific moment of total withdrawal into the activity,” says Tsal. He creates a diverse psychological range through carefully staged and planned photography. particular moment of action, that Tsal chooses to capture in his photographs, points to the fragile dividing line between the authentic and the staged.
Alongside the photographs, Tsal presents works intentionally disrupted with Photoshop, making the viewer to reassess the medium’s reliability. The human body, is examined in the exhibition. The photographer’s intense closeness to the objects of his works, is evident. His photography excels in distilling the human from that which does not seek to be seen or remembered or become an image.
The Party, a monumental light box, is comprised of dozens of photographs of youngsters dancing. Each of the figures was photographed alone in the studio. Thus, the collation into one photograph is feigned. The work is in the center of the gallery and the size of the light box turns it into a sculptural-photographic element.
Tsal extracts silent dramas from these simple day-to-day activities. His photographs implore the viewer to pause and reflect.
Best,
Talma
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