"Witness" – Michael Rapoport, Rosenfeld Gallery, Tel Aviv

A visit to painter Michael Rapoport's new, highly refined exhibition reminded me that within the profusion of artistic work inundating our realms in recent years, including elusive video performances, grand installations, abstract paintings, and mere amateurish photographs, there is also realism; not just any realism, but a good one.

Rapoport's meticulous work is characterized by depth, interest and uncompromising quality. In the current exhibition, "Witness", he explores the man and the woman, together and separately, using a technique of free realism, which combines painting and photography; a classical technique amorously embracing a modern technique. A real pleasure!

The figures in Rapoport's works are real. They live and breathe and cast sharp gazes, as if they were looking at the visitor and not vice versa. They transpire in an amorphous space not necessarily rooted in a given place and time, and their backdrop is fictive and nondescript – devoid of both content and statement. The exhibition spans all three floors of the Gallery. It is recommended to begin the tour on the lower floor and from there climb up to the additional two floors; this way Rapoport's work sequence unfolds with its highly impressive technical facet, and the formation of insights to which he strives.

The basement level features several small works executed in a photographic-painterly technique. The street level presents three medium-sized paintings based on the photographs from the lower floor. And the top floor, the jewel in the crown, features three especially impressive large-scale paintings relying in their being and essence on the works from the lower floors.

Several words about Rapoport, the artist, for those who are unfamiliar: He was born in Kazakhstan in 1948, graduated from the Art Academy of Tashkent in 1972, and immigrated to Israel in 1990. Over the years, he has had solo exhibitions in Kazakhstan, Latvia, Moscow, Germany, and Israel. He participated in numerous group exhibitions, most of them in Israel. He lives and works in Ramat Gan.

In short: highly recommended for connoisseurs, collectors, and ordinary art lovers.

The exhibition will be on view through January 28 at Rosenfeld Gallery, 147 Dizengoff Street, Tel Aviv.


[From: Ma'ariv, Magazine section, 29 December 2005,(Hebrew)]