Yocheved Weinfeld - Art

Art

In 1969 Weinfled exhibited her early paintings in a one-woman show in Mabat Gallery in Tel-Aviv (Israel). The paintings explored containments of biomorphic shapes (such as flesh) within geometric boundaries. The exhibition was met with disdain by most of the local art critics.

Over the next three years Weinfeld experimented with other juxtapositions of stylistic contrasts. Those were exhibited in numerous group shows, and eventually in 1972 in a one-woman show at the Bar-Kochba Gallery in Tel-Aviv. The exhibition met with mixed reviews. Reuben Berman wrote in The Jerusalem Post: “… Paintings based on internal stylistic and conceptual contrasts that break down fundamentally into a reasoned, studied, restrained approach on the one hand, and a spontaneous, gestural, painterly approach on the other… But the contrasts are lively and the show as a whole bears evidence of intellectual alertness…”

In 1973 following her mother’s death and the Yom Kippur War, in an attempt to relinquish her facile drawings, and out of need to express her reaction to the scarred flesh and the scarred society, Weinfeld started experimenting with stitches on paper in lieu of pencil lines, and sometimes next to them. Some of those “drawings” were perceived as erotic and feminine, if not feminist. Stitching paper and canvas gave way to a renewed interest in flesh and body.

In 1974, in a one-woman show at the Debel Gallery in Jerusalem, Weinfeld—again interested in paradox –- exhibited, among other works, a series of photographs of stitched hands and faces. These works that were in fact stitched photographs re-photographed, led way to works that became increasingly less concerned with esthetics or style and more conceptual in nature. The scarred, stitched “drawings” along with the stitched body parts, caused some critics to place Weinfeld’s art within the Body-Art movement, and within it as Feminst in nature.

In 1975, following her interest in synaesthesia and the definition of art as “an expression of what cannot be expressed otherwise,” Weinfeld explored the capability of visual art to transmit tactile physical bodily sensations, such as the sensation of hunger, or pain in the roots of hair. She juxtaposed scientific and descriptive text with objects that strove to transmit bodily sensations visually. Unfortunately, with the exception of Yigael Tzalmona (Maariv, 3.21.75), most critics missed the point, and saw the topics as unworthy of artistic endeavor.

In 1976, after reading the Code of Jewish Law (Shulhan Arukh), texts which she found fascinating and evocative, Weinfeld created a performance as part of her exhibition at the Debel Gallery. During the performance the artist explored visual, mythical images of prohibitions and rituals related to cleanliness and mourning, prompted by those texts. She acted out her own interpretation of the proscribed rituals. The content of the performance was, by virtue of the topic and the female artist’s prism, feminine, but not Feminist, in nature. In an artistic environment that shunned the mention of the Holocaust and Jewish religious topics, it was one of the first times that an artist used Jewish ancient and modern heritage as an inspiration for what was considered at the time an avant-garde work of art. In his article about the exhibition in Art News, (“Whimsey and poetry; traumas and taboos” September, 1976), Meir Ronnen wrote: “One left the gallery questioning many aspects of our Judeo-Christian cultural heritage – a heritage of pain, suffering, superstition and a mystic belief in man’s ability to rise above the physical in purification rites.” Despite the fact that the original video documentation of the performance was lost, and only still photographs remain, the performance is often cited in studies, journals and books as a seminal work in Israeli art.

In 1979 Weinfeld’s interest turned to primary images in memory and the ways they change and reoccur in subsequent memories. In her one person show at the Israel Museum she exhibited ten large complex works, each based on a childhood memory represented by a text. Each work consisted of posed photographs of herself, three dimensional objects and painted surfaces. Stephanie Rachum, the exhibition’s curator wrote in the catalogue: “The deliberate disregard for the aesthetic aspect coupled with the stress on the ideational process which exist in Weinfeld’s work is part of her Conceptual art background. --- This lack of transposing imbues the objects with vitality, energy and potency. --- Often the spectator feels that he has a ‘direct line’ to the sources that motivated or instigated the image.”