Litvak Contemporary
VOLTA NY 2017

ITAMAR FREED

VOLTA NY 2017
Booth C3

March 1–5, 2017

Litvak Contemporary is pleased to announce its participation in Volta NY 2017, featuring artist Itamar Freed. Freed, born in 1987 in New York is the winner of 2016 Clore Bezalel Scholarship and the “EPSON” first prize award winner for Excellence in 2012. Freed is studying nowadays on a full scholarship at the Royal College of Arts in London.

Freed examines through his artwork the vulnerability of the body as a potent signifier of lived experience. The photographs are staged and large, thus giving the portrayed subject a true to life appearance. The lines that demarcate the body are blurred and the figure becomes part of its surroundings. At times, the blurring refers not only to the barrier of the skin but also to the psychology of the depicted personalities.

Freed’s photographs’ aesthetics draw upon a return to the painting classics of art history, seeking to create for it a kind of contemporary photographic variation. His work “Woman in Green” for example, bears a resemblance to Caravaggio’s famous Self-Portrait as Young Sick Bacchus whereas similar composition and the jaundiced appearance of the skin and a dark green “palette” sends us unconsciously from Freed’s work to Caravaggio’s.
Freed works move between three expanses: the wilderness & nature, Natural History Museums and his studio. The encounter between the three territories – the wild, the cultured and the staged, creates a deceptive sensation. Some of his landscape images, are formed by merging various photographs that were taken in different occasions. This process leads to a new image of time and place, forming an imagery space based neither on memories nor past impressions, but scenes of unembellished realism coexisting with fantasy. Through the use of color, composition, lighting and focal points, the borders between dream and awakening are blurred, Freed’s photographic ambiance exists in a threshold zone, beyond the bounds of specific time and place.
The camera serves Freed as a scientific, anthropological research tool and as a tool for self-observation while the hyper-realistic photographs he creates are subject to the unprotected mercy of the observer's view.
About Litvak Contemporary
Litvak Contemporary is dedicated to showcasing the best of contemporary Israeli art in all media. In addition, the gallery presents established artists and rising stars from the international art community to an ever-growing audience in Israel. Litvak Contemporary is also proactive in introducing Israeli talent to viewers in Asia, Europe and the United States.

Volta Opening Hours:
Thursday, March 2: 12-8 PM
Friday, March 3: 12-8 PM
Saturday, March 4: 12-8 PM
Sunday, March 5: 12-5 PM

Press Inquiries:
Daria Kaufmann – dariak@litvakcontemporary.com ; +972-54-4212856
Litvak Contemporary 3 Shvil Hamifal St., 1st floor Tel Aviv, Kiryat Hamelaacha
www.litvakcontemporary.com