ARENA 1 is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of work by Bruria Finkel created over the past four years. This productive period in her career is astounding considering that the work was conceived and produced in these years of recovery from a serious car accident and the loss of 40% of her ability to move her head. For more than six months of she was required to wear a “halo,” a device screwed into her skull prohibiting any movement.
The exhibition will run June 14 – July 26th. There will be a walk through and artist talk on July 12th from 2 – 3 PM. Both are free and open to the public.
This exhibition draws on several different series, each in its own way addressing or responding to the accident and its aftermath. Collectively the body of works is a “meditation on time and life processes and the potential for nature to be a source of renewal if we simply slow down and experience it.” (catalog essay by Professor Emerita and artist Sheila Pinkel,)
Ever the innovator, Finkel took advantage of the challenges she faced in recovery, mastering iPhone and iPad photography in the process. In one series of haunting sometimes Magritte-like images she photographs herself as a shadow cast along walks and walls in her garden. With this “medieval torture apparatus” as she described it, “my hat became my crown and I anointed it a symbol pointing toward recovery and health.”
Everything immediately in front of her face became a possible source for new work – the bark of trees and the skin on the hands of those in her presence, the three-month life cycle of a pear on her kitchen table captured in a photographic elegy to beautiful decay. Other works continue the meditations she has practiced throughout her career, both in videos of skies, clouds and running water, and in paintings that explore relationships to symbolic language.
ARENA 1 A Project of Santa Monica Art Studios 3026 Airport Avenue Santa Monica, CA 90405 310.397.7456
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