Tumultuous Beauty
Yoram Chisin
14 February to 23 April 2023
Exhibition essay
Wounded, 2022
This exhibition displayed twenty abstract paintings by the French-Israeli artist Yoram Chisin (b. 1971). It marks the culmination of ten years of artistic development since Yoram became an artist. Having previously worked in the fashion industry in Paris and Tel Aviv, Yoram developed a nuanced appreciation of colour and fabrics that he encountered in the ateliers of Gucci and Christian Lacroix. This appreciation has greatly influenced Yoram’s dedication to material and chromatic experimentation in his painting. As a self-taught and self-proclaimed ‘unmethodical painter’, Yoram’s practice is a form of emotional craftsmanship: through abstract improvisation that involves the physical exploration and application of paints, objects and textiles on the canvas support, Yoram aims to channel his personal emotional tumult.
The vibrant and sculptural materiality of Yoram’s paintings dispel serenity and present a tumultuous form of beauty. For Yoram, these works are iterative attempts to use simple shapes - primarily spheres, squares and rectangles - to contain and order his emotions. “I take comfort in the things I know, but I also challenge myself to escape any form of constraint,” Yoram explains, “blurring the square motif to disrupt their hard geometry is part of this struggle to let go of structure.”
Yoram’s channelling of feeling through painterly touch and intense colour is not just therapeutic for the artist. The rough, sculptural surfaces of his works are also a recognition and celebration of life’s disorder; a way of apprehending meaning in a chaotic world. By pouring, stitching, ripping, rubbing and adding or exposing layers of paint, Yoram makes mesmerizingly intricate works that speak to notions of time and the accumulation of beauty, pain and experience.
The artist’s constant experimentation, particularly his creation and use of nuclear blue, becomes an embodied form of mystical and philosophical questioning. He returns to paintings again, and again, perennially dissatisfied and seeking answers. By making paintings over long periods of time, Yoram builds up many layers of paint, which become physical vestiges of his own psychological struggles and existential doubts. Influenced by the work of Hans Hoffman and Mordecai Ardon, Yoram brings colour field painting into the twenty-first century with zinging colours and an oblique sense of ecological, political and spiritual crises. Yoram’s paintings are built up by layering squares of paint, not all of which remain visible. The work is charged with beauty and pathos by this accumulation.
Presenting Yoram’s work within 45 Park Lane, a carefully designed interior with a luxurious and convivial atmosphere, lends the work a particular feel. Yoram expects that the paintings will continue to evolve, under the gaze of hotel clients and staff. He hopes the vitality of his colours and the intimate grandeur of his paintings will become more apparent. In a busy setting, Yoram’s work can be viewed at a glance or lingered on over a drink or moment of calm. Quietly, however, these visceral, luminous paintings eschew the decorative and convey a tumultuous beauty.
View all the artworks presented in the exhibition here.
Volcano I, 2022
Genesis, 2022
