www.eranshakine.com:
Sivan Raveh: 'This body of works by Eran Shakine combines two central themes in his work: canonic modern art and the symbols of Israeli Jewry.
In the series The Rabbi Goes to the Sea these themes undergo formal reduction, which places them in a historical and ideational perspective touching on a broad array of cultural, artistic, and political concerns.
The images of the forefathers of modernism, which appeared in a series of paintings from 2008 to 2010, are now replaced by a stylistic signature, a kind of formal trace transposed into the experience of Israeli-Jewish reality.
The symbols of Land-of-Israel Jewry also undergo radical reduction: the skullcaps, the andlesticks, and the menorahs now give way to a lone figure, a religious man in hassidic garb carrying two bags in his hands.
The Jewish signs undergo yet another transformation, from threedimensional objects to a calligraphic sign. Thus Shakine continues his engagement with the relation between form and word, which in the works of the progenitors of modernism appeared as a title within the body of the painting, while in The Rabbi Goes to the Sea all the paintings are 'Untitled.'
The new connection between the modern visual form and the textual signifier silences the droll layer, which softened the critical dimension of the works of the forefathers of modernism…'