Orit Hofshi

The fundamental dialogue taking place in Orit Hofshi’s works is a dialogue between the artist and the material - wooden boards with natural patterns and grains, in which she carves and engraves, at times into the existing grain and at times alongside it. The travail - genuine and strenuous manual labor, unfolds and reveals multitude levels: Physical, emotional and spiritual, creating vis vitae existing within the wood itself.

The works are monumental, both in their actual size and in the conceptualized imagery, derived from the extensive observation and close study of terrains and topographic structures, impelled by nature’s evident force and magnitude.

Even though the imagery stems from natural phenomena and topography, the depicted landscape is not in any way stereotypical or typical. Rather, there are apparent conceptual processes and personal interpretational filters affecting the displayed work. It is in this arena where Orit Hofshi brings forth another conceptual dialogue, juggling figments of imagination with the apparent concrete reality. What is the spectrum of reality? What is fantasque? And what indeed is the role of imagination in the molding of reality?

Orit Hofshi lays the foundation, an ambivalent “pre-historic" world composed of myriad of thoughts on the one hand, but communicating a sense of emptiness and the anticipation for human and intimate agenda on the other hand. Further contemplation deems the ambivalence as quite irrelevant, as the world existing and ingrained in our mind, the conceptual some what subjective world preceding the concrete perceived reality, is in fact valid and consequential.

Within uncharted terrains, Orit Hofshi seeks signs of life or evidence of early civilizations, returning time and time again to desolateness as the indicator of life prospects. The terrain is not deserted or shunted. The sense of an intangible dimension of elusive pre-creational thought is ever present. It is the notion of a territory embodying opportunities and possibilities in anticipation of their realization.

Two predominant images recur in the works reinforcing the concept. Grottos or pits, as natural vessels of containment and water reservoirs, and also as very distinctive natural elements harboring and nurturing life. These images assume both straight-forward communicative roles, as well as analogies of the world in general and of the human species as a microcosm: Mediators and agents for the exploration of emotional swerves and upheavals as well as elaborate cognitive processes.

The study and perusal of landscapes and surfaces conducted via the imagery, derives added validation from the physical nature of carving and gauging in the wood. The partition of the surface, even in a non linear manner, to upper and lower tiers conceptualizes for Orit Hofshi the existence of sky and earth, and perhaps the notion of heaven and earth. The viewer is exposed and offered a world enticing interpretation. Orit enables the spectator to delve into barren territory, explore and connect to selected sects or layers of reality in its acknowledged broader meaning.

Yifat Ben-Natan -