Anat Shiftan, Flora and Orchard #4
Clay Art Center is pleased to present Anat Shiftan: The Garden Solo Exhibition
In the Gallery & Online: March 31 - May 9
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 2nd, 1:30 - 3:30pm
Join us at the opening reception and enjoy outdoor light refreshments and sweet treats and have your kids get creative at our garden themed clay activity table. Fun for the whole family!
Anat Shiftan: The Garden is a solo exhibition with themes of the garden expressed in three-dimensional still life and centerpieces. Historically, still life depicts arranged elements from nature, life in the outdoors of the domestic world, and leans on the symbolic agency of these items to suggest a critique of the human condition. Inspired by the power of still life and the role of the centerpiece in domestic life, Anat creates arrangements that echo this history. She asks the viewer to question the legacy of nature, the botanical, and our material culture.
Works from the exhibition will be available for sale in our online shop and in the gallery.
Related Programming:
Anat Shiftan Virtual Gallery Tour & Talk
Broadcasting from Clay Art Center Gallery, Anat Shiftan will join us live to give a Virtual Gallery Tour and Artist Talk for her exhibition “The Garden” on Friday, April 22 at 12pm - Register Here
Handbuilt Vases & Planters (Ages 17+)
Instructor: Bree Hendricks
Saturday, April 2 at 2:30pm
Celebrate the start of spring by creating your own functional vases and planters. Suitable for total beginners and makers of all levels. Register Here
Patterned Plates – Mother’s Day Weekend (Ages 17+)
Instructor: Bree Hendricks
Saturday, May 7 at 2pm
Learn to make basic plates or bring your own leather-hard pieces to decorate with botanical motifs. Suitable for total beginners and makers of all levels. Register Here
Saturday Clay – Garden Themed Projects (Ages 6+)
Instructor: Jeff Dean
Saturday, April 9 at 2pm
Plan a great afternoon with friends or family in this fun and messy introduction to clay! Our professional ceramic artists will guide you through a garden themed handbuilding project that will be glazed and fired. Register Here
Artist Statement
The still life series examines the history of ceramics and world trade. The vignettes tell stories of various production methods, materials (porcelain stone ware etc.), and process of production (slip casting, wheel throwing, hand building and industrial artifacts). The juxtaposition of objects made in various ways and depicting distant moments in history and geography tell the story as a world of trade and travel since early days. The vignettes of Lekythos, Lotus Bowl, Wreath and Apple, brings into display Greek, Chinese and European heritage. This exchange prevalent since ancient time is a beautiful condition of humanity which I bring to light as positive aspects of cultural connections and exchange.
The Flora and Flora and Orchard series examine the ways we understand our world. Humanity and nature are often understood romantically in terms of growth and improvement. Yet, it is not always so. I shift the unbearable gaze onto the history of man: his wars and destruction and find that in nature too ambivalence prevails. The piles depict growth and decay, the organic and the mechanical aspects of nature, analogous to the human condition. Additionally, the natural world I create is imaginary versus realistic. This is a reflection of my condition where nature is an invented, unreachable, corrupted in time and by time, and exists only as an idea.
Artist Bio
Anat Shiftan is an Israeli artist who works in clay and print. In her work, she explores the subject of ambivalence in floral and zoological imagery, the representation of nature in art: the texture of sexuality, life and death, and power and subversion, all which ultimately reflect complex political and social attitudes. Currently, she also adds a layer of content that relates to issues of the environment and its preservation. Her printed images reflect on the dialectic relations between man and nature, focusing on the ambivalence reflected in the heroic yet destructive aspect of human intervention in nature, nature's response, and the resulting glorification of both. Shiftan received her BA in English Literature and Philosophy from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel and received her MFA in Ceramics from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and Design in West Bloomfield, Michigan. She has taught at Bezalel Academy for Art and Design in Israel and the University of Michigan before joining the faculty at SUNY New Paltz in the fall of 2003. Shiftan has twice received the Michigan Grant for Individual Artists and has exhibited her work extensively in both the United States and Israel. She is represented by Hostler Burrows gallery NY/LA.
