Locks Gallery is pleased to present Pharos, an exhibition of 15 wall-sized wood block prints and ink drawings by Israeli artist Orit Hofshi. This will be her first exhibition at the gallery, on view March 2nd through April 13th, 2012. There will be a reception for the artist on Friday, March 2nd, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm.
The exhibition title Pharos, taken from her 2012 piece, means both milestone and beacon. Hofshi’s work has long conveyed the notion of passage—both in the historical sense but also humanity’s individual renewal. Hofshi’s massive prints render agitated landscapes in black, ocres and shades of grey—the terrain alternately wild and marked by man’s imprint. Often depicting her native Israel, the plains and ruins are haunted by history, suggesting nostalgia, despair and meditation. The arid lands, symbolic and ordinary for every Israeli are reconfigured through Hofshi’s intense study of artists such as Albrecht Durer, Kathe Kollwitz and Anselm Kiefer.
The scale is proportional to the human body and viewers physically enter her space, experiencing each narrative. Her woodblock prints achieve monumentality while retaining an intimate quality in the abundant, intricate detail; each work imprinted or drawn by hand.
Hofshi’s virtuosic mastery of printmaking has developed over her entire career, specifically with spoon printed woodcuts on hand-made Abaca and Kozo paper. She has insistently pushed the boundaries of her art, finding metaphoric ways of presenting her prints as traces of carved images and echoes of a time-consuming process. She integrates her carved wood templates as part of three-dimensional installations—notably Kairos (2006, Tefen Museum, Israel), her prominent contribution to the Philagrafika exhibition, If the Tread is the Echo (2009) and Convergence (2011, created for List Gallery, Swarthmore College).
Hofshi was born in Kibbutz Matzuva, Israel in 1959. She lives and works in Herzliya. Having frequently and widely exhibited in many museums and art centers in Israel, she was the subject of a solo exhibition at The Israel Museum in Jerusalem in 2006.
Hofshi, a certificate graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, received her MA from the University of Leeds. Her work is in such collections as The Israel Museum, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
