SHIN Gallery is pleased to present Should We Keep the Head a solo exhibition of Israeli artist Amir Nave (b. 1974). The exhibition includes a selection of drawings and paintings with the intention to create moments of eternity within immortal objects. The gallery will host an opening reception for Nave on Wednesday, November 28, from 6 to 8 PM.

Amir Nave’s cultural upbringing is often integrated within his work by exploring issues of identity, consciousness, and human emotion. At the beginning of his career, Nave’s process consisted of small semi-automatic inscriptions scribbled with pen, pencil and felt-tip pens on ordinary papers or pages of worn books. His technique has since progressed and now centers on the destruction of concepts with finite connotations, in which the boundaries of morality, space, and interpersonal relationships are broken down. Small chaotic moments of eternity unfold within the artist and artwork, creating a liberation from the degenerate present to an intrinsic view on freedom. By overlapping paper, covering work entirely in tape, or utilizing unconventional materials such as book flaps, Nave creates novel collage-like modalities of expression.

Nave’s attempt to subvert consciousness and emotion is ultimately exploited in their fullest forms when the viewer becomes aware that he or she is a figure with natural limitations. Nave demonstrates this perspective in his drawings through sketchy marks of various textures and intensities, creating a chaotic landscape of sexually charged figures reflecting human desire. The dialogue between ruination and production in Nave’s work function as a symbolic relationship, in which creation is only possible through destruction. Nave also demonstrates this dynamic in his thickly layered oil paintings by expanding formats, distilling materials, and alternating painting tools. As opposed to his drawings, Nave’s paintings experience a process of reduction and cleansing. The materiality of the empty canvas is more present and at times only minimal lines or contours are seen to indicate movement. The works exhibited display sharp and pithy images of an existential state – both internal and external – characterized by dense urgency, ceaseless self-searching, and constant oscillation between fantasy and trauma.

Amir Nave, born in 1974 in Beer Sheva, lives and works in Tel Aviv. He exhibited solo shows at Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Herzliya (2016), Janco Dada Museum, Ein Hod (2014) and The Museum of Israeli Art, Ramat Gan (2008), among others. He participated in group shows at Ashdod Museum of Art, Ashdod (2013), The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2011), The Museum of Israeli Art, Ramat Gan (2011), The 4th Biennale for Drawing, Jerusalem and Museum On the Seam, Jerusalem (2010). Frieze New York (2015), Introspection, Sommer Contemporary Art Gallery, Tel Aviv (2015), Gallery Continua (2016), Tel Aviv Museum of Art: "The Rootless" (2016). He is a recipient of the 2013 Mifal Hapais Grant and of the 2012 Osias Hofstatter Prize.