Adi Nes

Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Tel Aviv, Dvir Gallery, Adi Nes: Photographs, 2000, no. 11, illustrated in color in the exhibition catalogue (another example exhibited)
Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Recent Photographs, 2001 (another example exhibited)
San Diego, Museum of Contemporary Art and Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Adi Nes Photographs, 2002 (another example exhibited)
Paris, Hotel de Sully and Jerusalem, Israel Museum, Revelation - Representations of Christ in Photography, 2002-2003 (another example exhibited)
Spain, MARCO, Museum de Arte Contemporaneo de Vigo and ARTIUM, Centro Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporaneo, Agrupemenos Todos, 2003 (another example exhibited)
Montreal, Photography Biennial, Le Mois de la Photo, 2003 (another example exhibited)
San Francisco, Fine Art Museums of San Francisco Legions of Honor, Between Promise and Possibility: The Photographs of Adi Nes, 2004 (another example exhibited)
Tel Aviv, Helena Rubinstein Pavilion at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2007 (another example exhibited)
New York, Neuberger Museum of Art of Purchase College, SUNY, The Compromised Land: Recent Photography and Video From Israel, 2013 (another example exhibited)

Yigal Zalmona, 100 Years of Israeli Art, 2010, p.440-441, illustrated in color

Born in 1966, Adi Nes studied photography from 1989-1992 at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem.  He is the recipient of many awards and scholarships including the Nathan Gottesdiener Foundation Israeli Art Prize, Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2000 and the Constantiner Prize for Photography, Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2003.

This work, Adi Nes' most celebrated photograph, is from a series in which Adi Nes staged and digitally manipulated scenes of Israeli soldiers at work, in combat, at play and at rest. Questioning the very context of the macho role often equated with the Israeli soldier, Nes explores issues of gender, personal and national identity through a discourse with Greek and Roman mythology as well as Old Master painters such as Leonardo da Vinci and Caravaggio. Nes also refers to historic Zionist photographs documenting the founding of the state of Israel. Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper from 1498 is the compositional source for this photograph.

"Set in an abandoned barracks, the arresting... image depicts fourteen soldiers gathered at a table set with orange cups and plates, the army's traditional dinnerware. Where the original fresco registers the drama of the moment in which Jesus announces that he will be betrayed, Nes' version illustrates no such tension. The disciples, including one extra that Nes says he added to get away from a direct quotation, are locked in private conversations while the central Jesus, his head haloed by a bush positioned behind him in the background, stares vacantly into space. Is this dazed Christ figure responding to the ongoing spiritual shellshock of life in the Middle East? The artist leaves interpretation open-ended, saying simply and sympathetically, 'I hope this isn't their last supper'". (Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego and Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago, Adi Nes Photographs, 2002).