Ori Gersht

Relevance to my work:

Gersht creates photographs of flowers mid explosion as a more contemporary version of the Dutch Still Life flowers that represent life’s fragility. I aim to do a similar thing to Gersht through my temporal whiteboard flower drawings.

"Ori Gersht pushes film, video and photographic camera to the limits of what it can record. He does this through an innovative approach and an in depth understanding of the physical limitations of the medium. Gersht's use of light and film leaves an imprint in time which becomes his vehicle for meaning. In his Blow Up series, he depicts elaborate floral arrangements captured in the moment of exploding. The authority of photography as an objective truth has been shattered, but new possibilities to experience reality in a more complex manner has arisen."

ALL VISUAL ARTS; (2011); Vanitas: The Transience of Earthly Pleasures; All Visual Arts: London; 171.

"At the heart of Ori Gersht's art is a question: how to capture the ghosts of the Holocaust, Hiroshima, and Israel's wars? Gersht's work is about the persistence of trauma, the elusiveness of memory — "an attempt," he tells me, "to hold onto something that's already lost.""

COOK, G. (2012). 'Ori Gersht's Post-traumatic stress'. [article]. Available from: http://thephoenix.com/boston/arts/143715-ori-gershts-post-traumatic-stress/#ixzz31KyfELaK. [10/5/2014].

“Nothing of the genre’s traditional composure could prepare us for Ori Gersht’s Time After Time (2007), wherein a tranquil vase of flowers, mimicking the still-life paintings of 19th century painter Henri Fantin-Latour, is seen visibly exploding. A bouquet inspired by one of Fantin-Latour’s floral compositions is staged here in real life, photographed precisely in the nano-second of its violent eruption. Historically, the kind of detailed mimesis of reality studiously delivered in the vanitas’ usual decay and withering but are instantaneously blasted to their end, as recorded using a super-rapid shutter speed of 1/7500 of a second to immortalize a brief, entropic moment of beauty’s destruction.” Pg 16

Pomegranate "In Pomegranate (2006), a bullet roars into an exquisite arrangement of fruits and vegetables that resembles an Old Master painting. It shatters a pomegranate (in Hebrew, the word also means "grenade") into a bloody red slow-motion shower. At first, the Hollywood polish is seductive, the gunshot jolting, but repeated viewings can make it feel absurd: let's blow up an Old Master!"	Blow Up: Untitled 1 Gersht uses the image of the flower, the same as the imagery used by the Old Masters, to represent the transience of earthly life. However, through his use of explosion he draws attention to the viewer the idea that war and violence draws life to a quick end.	Blow Up: 8 (2007) Gersht uses the image of the flower, the same as the imagery used by the Old Masters, to represent the transience of earthly life. However, through his use of explosion he draws attention to the viewer the idea that war and violence draws life to a quick end.
Exploding Flowers Gersht uses the image of the flower, the same as the imagery used by the Old Masters, to represent the transience of earthly life. However, through his use of explosion he draws attention to the viewer the idea that war and violence draws life to a quick end.

Ori Gersht

Pomegranate

Blow Up: Untitled 1

Gersht uses the image of the flower, the same as the imagery used by the Old Masters, to represent the transience of earthly life. However, through his use of explosion he draws attention to the viewer the idea that war and violence draws life to a quick end.

Blow Up: 8 (2007)

Gersht uses the image of the flower, the same as the imagery used by the Old Masters, to represent the transience of earthly life. However, through his use of explosion he draws attention to the viewer the idea that war and violence draws life to a quick end.

Exploding Flowers

Gersht uses the image of the flower, the same as the imagery used by the Old Masters, to represent the transience of earthly life. However, through his use of explosion he draws attention to the viewer the idea that war and violence draws life to a quick end.