Hili Lew Greenfeld & Shirel Safra: Midnight Sun

Beyond the Arctic Circle, around the summer solstice, one can witness the natural phenomenon called Midnight Sun: the sun slowly dips to the horizon, lightly skimming it, but rather than setting and allowing darkness to take over, it rises again. Midnight Sun is thus sunset and sunrise intertwined. A new day begins before the previous day ends; the boundaries blur, and one thing follows another incessantly. Throughout the polar summer, there is continuous daylight even at midnight. Light floods and illuminates everything, while fatigue increases as the body and mind do not get the necessary rest. In Hili Lew Greenfeld and Shirel Safra’s two-person exhibition, Midnight Sun is a metaphor for the blurring of boundaries between states of wakefulness and sleep and for interference with the familiar day/night cycle. The exhibition examines the blurring between childhood and adulthood—stages of development bound together in a loop by the sequence of memory. In the spirit of English poet William Wordsworth’s well-known observation—“The Child is father of the Man”—the paintings and sculptures on view delve into the depths of childhood memories that continue to exist in the consciousness of the adult, reflecting the effects of sleep cycles and sleep deprivation on this experience. Intermediate states in which day and night, opposites and contrasts merge, allow for a simultaneous presence in both poles. The fusion between childhood experiences and the troubles of adulthood introduces play and amusement not only as a source of pleasure, but also as a force that carries fear and terror.

Hili Lew Greenfeld (b. 1981) — Transpiring on the line between painting and object and between abstract and figurative, Hili Lew Greenfeld’s works explore twilight states of movement between worlds. The images trickle into each other to create a language of amalgamation, representing intermediate

states of darkness and innocence, game versus fear. The works combine painting on objects sculpted in wood, architectural in appearance, simulating windows and representing transition zones between the conscious and the unconscious. Made with multiple layers of oil on wood, the painting has a drawn-like quality resulting from engraving and scratching the surface. At the same time, the exposure of the layers infuses the painting with a dimension of depth in the form of the residues of personal and cultural memory.

Shirel Safra (b. 1983) — Shirel Safra explores temporal and spatial cyclicality and relativity. His works call to mind amusement park attractions, which jolt their users powerfully and create an experience of temporal distortion: inside, time seems to accelerate, while outside it remains static. Thus, for example, in the Ferris Wheel-like sculpture Time Circles through the Eyeball, twelve paintings of suns, symbolizing the hours of the day in a frequently changing level of abstraction, replace the seats; Returning to the Same

Point in front of the Disintegrating Sun, which resembles an embroidery of bright, abstract landscapes, was created via circular movements; whereas the vividly colored attraction paintings, which range from figurative to abstract, recall the blinding of lights in the dark of night. The abstract represents an intermediate state, a locus in-between sleep and wakefulness, where the images melt and the words blend into gibberish just before falling into a deep sleep.

Installation photographs: Tal Nisim