Me and you

Asad Azi and Asaf Rotem

Curator: Jennifer Bloch

22.12.2016 - 20.01.2017

On Thursday December 22, 2016, Alfred – A Cooperative Institute for Arts and Culture, will open a dual exhibition titled 'Me and you’, which will feature the works of Asad Azi and Asaf Rotem.

In the opening event speeches will be carried by:

The mayor of Or Yehuda, attorney Liat Shochat, where Assaf Rotem was born and raised; Gilad Meltzer, a senior lecturer in HaMidrasha School of Arts Beit Berl College; and family.

This exhibition will be the tenth and final in the annual theme of 2016 – The Humane. The annual series is divided into two sequences of exhibitions that attempt to examine the possible content of "the humane" as it is perceived today: 'the relations between the human and the divine' and 'the relations between the personal and the general'. Both sequences attempt to stress the concept of The Humane. All of the exhibitions stand alone, artistic and curatorial, but share a common concept.

Me and you

The exhibition Me and You presents the art works of Asad Azi, a well-established artist and an academic art teacher, and the late Assaf Rotem who graduated from college a year and a half ago after studying fine arts. Rotem was a promising young man, who committed suicide a few months ago.

The exhibition will include a series of portraits created by Azi and Rotem. Azi's acrylic on paper paintings are small-sized, while Rotem's paintings are medium-sized, and are mostly created with acrylic on canvas.

Rotem painted a series of portraits of artists at exhibitions opening events, depicting the exhibiting artists and others as well. His works describe the art world, focusing on the images of well-known artists. Rotem's paintings are expressive and lively, and consist bold colors. His secondary subjects in some of his paintings are the paintings participating in the exhibitions, whose "portraits" he painted as well.

Azi will exhibit a series of portraits of people who are no longer alive. He began working on this series prior to Rotem's death. The people who Azi chose to portray are not famous or familiar, and he perpetuates them by the act of painting. These realistic paintings are painted on different pages of an annual calendar.

Following the death of Rotem, Azi painted his portrait, as one of those people who are not with us anymore, and this painting will be displayed at the exhibition.

The exhibition brings together a well-known mature artist and a young artist, who grew in different cultures, but who both are figurative painters. The contrast between the state of life and vitality and the state of negation stirred things up.

In an act of grace and generosity, Azi decided to step aside and allow the works of Rotem to occupy most of the gallery space and thus become the center of the exhibition. Azi claimed that he, himself, has exhibited and will exhibit in numerous exhibitions. Rotem was too young to establish an artistic career, besides participating in a number of group exhibitions. However, it was important that Azi would exhibit his works alongside Rotem's works, as Rotem wished in the first place.