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Michael Druks
View. Material. Thought.
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Michael Druks's new body of work reflects his uncompromising signature as an artist who deliberates on questions of meaning through minimalist, modest practice.
A total artist, Druks is a rare individual. There is no fragment of identity or moment in his existence incongruent with the world view unfolded in his art. At the outset of his career he was identified with the use of his body and figure as products of the local reality and culture. In the current exhibition he is an artist going out to a space from which the world may be observed externally, hopping back in to recount what he had seen. In his new works too, he employs his typical conceptual approach to examine the state of contemporary art and its products.
In a recent interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Druks attested to his intricate thought—an ultra-Jewish, indirect, different type of thinking. He "reflects" on the materials he uses in a manner which enables the viewer to engage in a dialogue with the work, to question, to explore what it proposes without the work forcing a given view upon him.
Druks is not interested in social protest. In the past he introduced new borders for territories in which he operated as a human being, while challenging local cultural orders. In the works featured in "View. Material. Thought." he contemplates the boundaries of the fine art field, bringing to the fore controversial cultural notions.
Canvases from the 1980s become mundane artifacts. Druks uses his materials in an unconscious, intuitive manner, toying with them as if he were a child playing with blocks. He does not strive to realize a preconceived idea or to "hit a target"; rather, he works, and then draws the target when he concludes.
Druks uses random coloration, the color is not a decorative element. It does not serve the contents, and the unnatural tones are intended to enhance the absence of the natural and authentic.
Painting is an installation of barrel, pole and flag that indicates the temptation to revisit territories from within. Druks cannot avoid criticizing the sloppy work of artists for whom art is not the center of the universe. The installation attests to improvised gathering of chance materials at hand to make a point, a process which, he believes, characterizes both the art world and the political reality.
In Performance, the criticism is turned at the "multifaceted" artist, who does not settle for being an artisan, a professional, but strives, simultaneously, to be a philosopher and a commentator, and to take responsibility for the status of his art work in the cultural sphere. In the context of this "multi-tasking," Igael Tumarkin once recounted that when Zaritsky visited Arie Aroch's studio, he said: "If there is a suit on the hanger, Aroch is now a painter, and if there is an apron – he is a diplomat."
Everyday objects, used as weights intended to stabilize works in the artist's studio, transform in Digital Cast Iron and Digital Liquid, into an image by replication and lifting. The shift of perspective and the movement embedded in them are intended to captivate the viewer to the essence of the image, which is elusive and fluctuates with every blow.
Druks's works do not function as a language, nor are they personal. They are not metaphors, and were not created in response to or as an interpretation. Their past is as short as the duration of the work process.
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