Tal Shochat

Rosenfeld Gallery, Tel Aviv
Acquired from the above

Tel Aviv, Fresh Paint 3 Contemporary Art Fair, 2010 (another example exhibited)

This photograph is in excellent condition. The photo face appears to be mounted to the plexiglass. There is a four inch scratch visible on the plexi surface at the lower right corner. In otherwise good condition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

PROPERTY SOLD TO BENEFIT THE SHPILMAN INSTITUTE FOR PHOTOGRAPHY (Lots 38 - 48)

The SIP’s public research collection of photographs reflects the Institute’s profound interest in studying different realms of the photographic medium. The collection, numbering over 900 works, focuses on historical images, contemporary Israeli and international photography. Conceptually, the collection focuses on photography’s disengagement from traditional documentary approaches and towards the discovery of other modes of action in the artistic field. The Israeli collection features central works of Israel’s most prominent contemporary photographers, dating from the 1970s to recent years.

AN INTRODUCTION TO ISRAELI PHOTOGRAPHY by Gideon Ofrat

Perhaps, the most significant momentum in contemporary Israeli art pertains to the field of photography. Outstanding Photography departments in art academies and in leading museums, galleries dedicated to photography, photography prizes, ‘The Shpilman Photography Institute’ and many more have instigated in Israel what has long been apparent in the international art world: the golden age of photography. And thus, alongside valuable and bold documentary photography, mainly committed to the representation of grief and sorrow in the ‘Israeli condition’ given the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Micha Bar-Am, Pavel Wolberg, Miki Kratsman, Alex Levac, Gaston Itskovich and more), there was also the artistic photography which has begun to flourish, winning recognition and appreciation among the world’s most renowned museums and galleries. Simultaneous with the unprecedented pluralism taking on the post-modern artistic scene in Israel and worldwide, the practice of artistic photography has also reaffirmed a multitude of syntaxes of various artists. Indeed, even if one does not expect to encounter an “Israeli photographic substance“, most of the photographs on view here – the works of ten of Israel’s most important contemporary photographers –ratify a visual tension between trauma and fiction, with sediments of unease concealed in the depth of the artistic effort to convert the realistic into the simulated.

The attempt to beautify, while hybridizing the natural with the artificial, is key to the work of Tal Shochat whose photographs have been shown in exhibitions in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Tel Aviv Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London (Light from the Middle East: New Photography, 2012). The theme of the desolate tree developed in the artist’s work in 2005 in the context of the seasons of the year and the circle of life, but her fruit trees series from 2011, photographed in various Israeli orchards and looking like part of a utopic Persian-garden, are taken out of time. Shochat’s occupation with exceptional beauty, seductive and suggestive, is not free of morbidity, insinuated in this photograph by the fallen fruits on the ground, a memorable symbol for “Memento mori”.