Saint Jerome (347-420 AD) speculated that the soul of a person, its benevolence or otherwise, is reflected on their face - exclaiming that 'The Face is the Mirror of the Mind’. In this belief, Saint Jerome followed the teachings of Socrates, who had come to a similar conclusion six centuries earlier. By blurring the facial features of the people he depicts, Gideon Rubin takes the audience on an entirely different path, encouraging them to reassemble the subjects’ soul through their pose, attitude, dress and hair.
The exhibition acts as an introduction to the themes and narratives that occupy the artist. Many of the paintings explore adolescence, the short yet formative period between childhood and adulthood - a fleeting moment in time that Rubin captures in oil on canvas. Other themes that present themselves throughout the exhibition, and in Rubin’s work more generally, include ideas of history and memory, identity and anonymity.
Photography is the source for Rubin’s paintings, who uses anonymous photographs to find his subjects. Taken from vintage photo albums and the internet, the unidentified photographs are scattered about the artist’s studio; they form tall stacks on the desk and a thick carpet on the floor, whilst some are taped to the wall for closer inspection. Often it is films that present themselves as source material; for this exhibition, scenes from films by Eric Rohmer and Andrei Tarkovsky are reproduced on canvas and linen.
Rather than a faithful reproduction, Rubin offers an interpretation of the original; through composition and editing he makes the image his own, removing superfluous details until only the essence remains. Through this process the image becomes less specific - it is no longer a painting of a photograph, instead, through the process of painting it achieves a life of its own, it acquires its own identity.
For this exhibition Rubin collaborated with curator Cici Xiang, who wrote an accompanying text that weaves a narrative of a young life. The exhibition follows a fictional teenage life, offering an open-ended story of youth and adolescence. Speaking of the work in the exhibition, Rubin explains:
“I made this group of paintings thinking of childhood, of adolescence. A first kiss; a strand of hair; an evocative scent. Paintings brought together like musical notes, to reveal a hidden narrative.
I want to make work that speaks to our younger selves, images that play with memory. I wanted them to be soft and poetic - an antidote to our daily high-speed routines.
I return over and over to the subject of adolescence in my work - perhaps it’s the emotional subtext, or the journey of sexual discovery. It is when we are formed, and we carry it wherever we go.”
Gideon Rubin was born in Israel in 1973. He studied at the New York School of Visual of Arts and at the Slade School of Fine Art in London where he still lives and works. He is represented by Galerie Karsten Greve (Paris, Cologne, St Moritz), Hosfelt Gallery (San Francisco), Fox Jensen (Sydney, Auckland), Alon Segev (Tel Aviv) and Galleria Monica De Cardenas (Milan). Solo exhibitions include Chengdu MoCA (China), San Jose ICA (U.S.A), Freud Museum (London), Jerusalem Artist House (Jerusalem), Bialik House (Tel Aviv), and Pharos Art Foundation (Cyprus). Group exhibitions include McEvoy Foundation for the Arts (U.S.A), The Royal Academy (London), Kunsthalle Emden (Germany), Mackintosh Museum (Scotland), National Art Museum (China), Tel Aviv Museum of Art (Israel), Haifa Museum (Israel), Jerusalem Biennale (Israel) and Flag Art Foundation (U.S.A). His work has been collected by the Museum Voorlinden (Netherlands) The Zabludowicz Collection (England), Collezione Maramotti (Italy), Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art (Israel), Ruinart Collection (France) and the Fondation Frances (France).
