Fade to Grey, 2015, Installation view, Raw Art Gallery, Photography: Youval Hai

Fade to Grey

January 22 - February 28, 2015

Curator: Nogah Davidson

Raw Art Gallery is pleased to announce "Fade to Grey", a solo exhibition by Revital Rettig. This is her first show with the gallery presented in Tel Aviv.

It is no secret that the general public has little appreciation for contemporary art and people that may be educated, intelligent and culture enthusiasts, respond reluctantly when introduced to contemporary art. Presumably there are a number of reasons accountable for this chilly reception, but it seems that the most dominant problem is related to the issue of technical artistic skills. When a painting, a drawing or a sculpture does not explicitly demonstrate artisanal virtuosity, the common criticism argues that contemporary art is no more than the emperor's new clothes: not art but rather a fraud, a joke on the viewer's expense under the false pretense of intellectualization, or as the saying goes: "a child could have made that." Revital Rettig's exhibition addresses this matter, as her works seemingly range between abstract, free-handed scribbles and realistic, meticulously detailed academic techniques.

Set between these two extremes is a series in which the artist recreates her infant daughter's first scribbles. Naturally her daughter had no intention of expressing or representing anything other than what the drawings are– a reflection of her enjoyment and interest at the moment in time which they were executed. Though every child enjoys drawing or scribbling, sadly this basic pleasure is often terminated at a young age by self censorship and/ or social censorship. It can be said that adult people who still create art, have managed to keep to some extent the (perhaps childish) freedom to engage in a practice that brings them joy. Even if they may also occasionally struggle with the paralyzing fear brought on by the white canvas/ paper.

Thus, when we encounter a child drawing non-judgmentally, without any need for the drawing to be beautiful or to even make sense, when the drawing demonstrates his/ her freedom to explore, to imagine and to enjoy, we can't help being in awe of the natural wisdom in which he/ she experiences life and wonder why this basic knowledge escapes us in our adult life. Why is it that in order to rid our minds of disturbing thoughts and experience joy as adult s we need drugs, alcohol, month long silent retreats, fifteen year long psychological treatments.

And so perhaps the saying "a child could have made that" is not as negative as it may seem. Perhaps instead of seeing it as a delegitimizing insult, it can rather be regarded as an aspiration. That said, we must distinguish between Rettig's work and the Naïve or "outsider" art genres: though she too finds beauty in the elemental intuitions of childhood, her perspective is disillusioned for she realizes the hopelessness of her aspirations. Her strictly executed reiteration of her daughter's random lines represents the disparity between the two – whilst the daughter is motivated by freedom of expression; the mother is motivated by her contemplations on the freedom that is no more. She understands she can never return to a time free of self doubt.

This is also evident in another abstract series in which she created clusters of dense lines. Though we see in these works Rettig part from the ascetic, precise line and present coarser strokes, there is still a significant difference between the daughter's loose, lightweight gestures and the way the mother fills the paper with a dark accumulated mass. Whereas the daughter's lines are light and airy, the mother's have an emotional baggage that almost threatens to tear the paper. As if there were not enough graphite in the world to satisfy the emotional relief she is seeking.