Orna Oren Izraeli - Artist

My creation process comprises three fundamental phases. 

The first one is staging and taking photos of scenes related to the subject I am dealing with at any given point in time. After some time, during which I sketch and paint details and situations originated in the pictures, comes the second phase: drawing selected imagery in their entirety onto a flat substrate consisting of a number of laminated parquet flooring panels attached together. 

During the third phase, the images painted on the parquet slabs are put to a process of dismantling and re-organization and then installed along the wall in different structures, as a manifestation of variations in compounds and borders, re-mixing and metamorphism. 

The painting materials I use are diverse and change. Lately, in the preparation stages, I work mainly with pastel pencils and acrylic paint. The materials used on the parquet slabs are oil paint, markers, solvents, acrylic colours, and so forth. 

It is widely accepted to see in parquet covered floors an infrastructure that bestows onto the rooms of a home an atmosphere of warmth and resilience in face of burnout and crisis. The laminated parquet slabs are made of industrial synthetic materials that emulate real wood. 

A representation of nature, but not the real thing. 

The old floor panels accumulate in the atelier, loaded with the homely atmosphere that prevailed in the rooms where they used to be floors and show the dismantling marks that bear witness that they have been replaced by new flooring a long time ago. 

These materials are the foundation of the creative process, and undermine the idealization of Home as a personal and collective realm of satisfaction and serenity. The compilation of the works challenges the status of the artistic product and materializes the existence of a true, escalating, and ongoing creative process of working with movement and continuity. 

The body of the oeuvre points out to the phenomenon of disintegration of core values, detachment, turmoil, and falsehood. My aim is to question the finiteness and permanence of situations, objects, beliefs, and opinions. 

Out of the works emerges a tangible sense of discrepancies and passion to actually make changes. The re-organization actions I undertake during the collocation of the works in the exhibition may bring with them surprises, revelations and new perspectives on the changing reality, creating an alternative narrative that has yet to be deciphered.