Naomi Shalev
''I-SPACE'' 2021

''I-SPACE'' 2021

Collage of newspaper clippings

135/110 cm

signed

Naomi Shalev (born October 31, 1976) is an Israeli artist specializing in collage works.

Shalev was born in Odessa (Ukraine), and immigrated to Israel with her family in 1992. The family settled in Haifa, where Shaev graduated with honors from Witso High School majoring in visual arts. She began studying industrial engineering and management at the Technion, but after two and a half years she left and moved to study at the Technological Institute in Holon, and in 2004 she graduated with honors from the Faculty of Design and Art.

After her studies, Shalev worked as a freelancer in the field of graphic design, but with the development of her career as a collage artist, she abandoned graphic design and now focuses on creating collages.

Shelev lives in Haifa.

Shalev's involvement in collages began in the late 1990s, when she received a collection of magazines from an author that he no longer needed. Since she didn't know what to do with the newspapers, she started cutting out pictures and putting them together in funny compositions and created surreal collages. The occupation became a hobby, and over time she looked for ways to make larger compositions and thus the technique she works with was born: using clippings of newspaper pages instead of a brush and paints - painting using newspapers.

Accuracy, order and planning are an important part of Shalev's work. The creation process begins with the preparation of a sketch based on a photo or invented from the imagination of the final size of the work. On top of the drawing, he builds the collage as an independent layer that is not glued to the paper. She uses a database of newspaper clippings sorted into precise subtones. Looking closely at the final image, you can see the pieces that she puts together, but the impression she gets is that she is painting a picture. Sometimes he also incorporates touches of acrylic and markers in her works.

Many of Shalev's collages are portraits of one or two figures, including her own, which allows her to examine the changes that occur in her over time. It's not just portraits, purely for aesthetics, as she uses portraits as a tool to express feelings and thoughts. For her, this is the way to tell a story. The story is the real reason for the creation, while the portrait is the medium through which the story is told. The stories she tells are very personal and even intimate.

Ostensibly the portraits she creates are realistic, but in many cases she departs from a realistic image, processes it and creates a new reality, the fruit of her imagination. Shalev testifies that, like every person, she also has many unfulfilled desires, and her works allow her to create a new, richer and more satisfying reality, "a reality in which she has control over how things will look, behave and develop". (from 'Wikipedia')