Lot 106: q - Adi Nes b. 1966 , Untitled (from the Boys series) color print

signed ADI NES and signed in Hebrew (on a label affixed on the backboard of the frame) color print

measurements 55 1/8 by 55 1/8 in. alternate measurements 140 by 140 cm.

Milan, Palazzo Reale, Israel: Art and Life, 1906-2006, 2006 (another example illustrated)
New York, Vivian Horen Fine Art, In Between Places, New Art from Israel, 2006 (another example exhibited)
Rome, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Israeli Contemporary Photography, 2005 (another example exhibited)
Linz, Austria, The OK Center of Contemporary Art, The Promise, The Land, 2003 (another example exhibited)
New York, Jack Shainman Gallery, 2003 (another example exhibited)
Montreal, UQAM Gallery, 2003 (another example exhibited)
San Diego, Museum of Contemporary Art; The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago, 2000 (another example exhibited)
Ein Harod Museum of Art, Mother Tongue, 2002, (another example exhibited)
Tel Aviv Museum of Art , Adi Nes: Recent Photographs, 2001, plate 6, illustrated
Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Tel Aviv, Dvir Gallery and San Fransisco, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco Legion of Honor, Adi Nes: Photographs ,The Leon Constantiner Photography Award for an Israeli Artist, 2003, 2004, p. 53, illustrated in color
Paris, Galerie Praz Delavallade, 2003

Ellen Ginton, Adi Nes: Recent Photographs,The Nathan Gottesdiener Foundation Israeli Art Prize 2000, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2001
Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Adi Nes: Biblical Stories, 2007, p. 72, illustrated in color
O. Youdovich, Fotografia Israeliana Contemporanea, FPM.Com Edizioni, Rome, 2005
Edlinger, S. Rollig & R. Schony, The Promise The Land, Jewish-Israeli Artists in Relation To Politics And Society, O.K. Center for Contemporary Art Upper Austria, 2004
V. Lavoie (ed.), "Now, Images of Present Time", Le Mois de la Photo a Montreal, 2003

Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Executed in 2000, this work is number 1 from an edition of 3.
PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION IN ISRAEL
In his photographs Nes explores issues of gender, personal and national identity through a discourse with Greek and Roman mythology, Biblical themes from the Old and New Testament as well as iconic works mainly from the Renaissance. The photograph offered here is from his Boys series executed in 2000. This series is based on the artist's childhood memories of growing up in the time of the community-rehabilitation programs of Kiryat Gat and on the iconography of Greek mythology. This work reveals life in modern day Israeli development towns rendered in dramatic Renaissance light and shade. Ellen Ginton associates this work to Yitzhak Danziger's Nimrod contrasting the heroic Zionist model of the past to the disillusioned boy of the present. Doreet LeVitee Harten discusses this work and writes: "The boy, whose glance is doubled and intensified in the bird's gaze... is also the carrier of the Ganymede myth - an icon of pederastic love: having fallen in love with Ganymede, Zeus disguises himself as an eagle, abducts and brings him to the Olympus, and later grants him eternal existence by turning him into a celestial constellation.... The raven then, standing for the erastes, takes over the role of the father, whereas the biological father is relegated to a meaningless position in the boy's life. The trauma experienced by fathers in families originating from Arab speaking countries when immigrating to a secular, western society has been widely researched. This crisis was most strongly felt in Israeli development towns, where the majority of the population had arrived from such countries. It is characteristic of Nes that the local conflict should be expressed through the bypass of a foreign mythology, that it be reintroduced through the back door of a different culture, thus creating a distance that enables contemplation beyond direct criticism." (Doreet LeVitte Harten in "Less the Horror than the Grace", Adi Nes, The Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2007, p. 133-134).