Adi Nes

Jack Shainman Gallery, New York 
Sale: Phillips, New York, April 9, 2011, lot 220
Acquired from the above

Tel Aviv, Dvir Gallery, Adi Nes: Soldiers 1994-2000, 2000, no. 1, illustrated in color in the exhibition catalogue (another example exhibited)
San Diego, Museum of Contemporary Art; Chicago, Columbia College, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Adi Nes: Photographs, 2002 (another example exhibited)
Vienna, Kunsthalle Wien, Saint Sebastian: A Splendid Readiness for Death, 2003-2004, pp. 58-59, illustrated in color in the exhibition catalogue (another example exhibited)
Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Adi Nes, 2007, p. 53, illustrated in color in the exhibition catalogue (another example exhibited)
Petach Tikva Museum, Six Days Plus Forty Years, 2007 (another example exhibited)
Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Moods and Modes in Israeli Photography, Works from the Collection, Gift of Leon and Michaela Constantiner, 2007, p. 71, illustrated in color in the exhibition catalogue (another example exhibited)
Milan, Palazzo Reale, Israele Arte e vita, 1906-2006, 2006-2007, p. 39, illustrated in color in the exhibition catalogue (another example exhibited)
Rome, Instituto Nazionale per la Grafica, Deposition, 2010 (another example exhibited)
Rome, Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel Now: Reinventing the Future, 2012 (another example exhibited)
Toronto, Koffler Gallery off-site at Olga Korper Gallery, Adi Nes, 2012 (another example exhibited)

Tel Aviv Museum of Art and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Between Promise and Possibility: The Photographs of Adi Nes, 2004, p.54, illustrated in color in the exhibition catalogue
Iris Rywkind Ben-Zouur and Revital Alcalay, Israeli Art Now (in Hebrew), 2009, p. 139, illustrated in color

This work is in excellent condition with strong colors. It has not been viewed out of its frame.
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.

Adi Nes, who became known for his choreographed image of Israeli soldiers in his homage to ‘The Last Supper’, presents another image from the ‘Soldiers’ series (1999), but this time a carefully directed paraphrase of a famed image of IDF soldiers dipping into the Suez Canal when it was conquered in 1967. Adi Nes, born in Kiryat Gat in Israel on 1966, studied photography at the Bezalel Academy of Art and received highly acclaimed exhibitions at the Israel Museum and the Tel Aviv Museum. In 2000 he won the Gottesdiener prize for a young artist from the Tel Aviv Museum, and in 2007 he exhibited his Bible series at the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York. Between 1994 and 2000 Nes created his Soldiers series, featuring 22 staged photographs of IDF soldiers portrayed by models. While early photographs in this series portray IDF soldiers as acrobats, jugglers and fire swallowers, his later works – like the photograph offered here – depict IDF soldiers in anti-heroic situations (a reaction to the tendency of traditional photography to glorify soldiers), and insinuate homo-erotic sensations. Nes’ Soldiers examines the Israeli ethos and the borders of the Israeli masculine identity through the manifestation of physical power, sexuality, ‘togetherness’ and fondness. Thus, as a paraphrase on raising the Israeli flag in Eilat in 1948, Nes has recreated that scene, with neither the flag nor the flagpole to be found. Nationality, therefore, is excluded from what the artist is attempting to communicate. Accordingly, whereas the famous image of the Israeli soldiers from Suez 1967 which appeared in LIFE magazine expressed a sense of national victory, Nes’ photograph depicts a playful encounter and manly comradeship.