A Moment in Time: Gabi Yair

For three decades, Yair has been drawing spontaneously, without prior preparation, on whatever surfaces happen to be available. The drawing is free—sometimes light and minimalist, and at other times dense, intense, and expressive. It all follows an emotion that comes from within, accompanied by the rhythm or melody of a given moment. In earlier works, a landscape framework could be identified, if only hinted at by a single line representing the horizon.

In preparation for this exhibition, Yair worked on large-format sheets of paper. On these surfaces, the act of drawing sets the entire body in motion, while the gaze captures only a fragment at the moment of drawing. The image is created as a whole through movement in varying rhythms and lengths, according to the state of the body and the mood at the time of the action. In this body of work, the landscape structure is relinquished in favor of an abstraction in which one can sense an ongoing occurrence or a movement that has frozen.

“When I look at my works, I recognize a place, a view toward a horizon, or an occurrence that emerges and takes shape by chance. At times the image is intricate and crowded, and at others light and airy. This is drawing created out of an inner impulse seeking release, and stopping when it reaches saturation. A painterly movement that is an act unto itself, committed to nothing but attentiveness and an inner rhythm.

For nearly three decades I have been ‘clinging to the thicket’ and gazing toward the horizon, on both a personal and a public level.

When observing the process of my line drawings, I identify a recurring pattern. The movement of the hand repeats itself several times in an almost compulsive manner, in a sequence and with an intensity that change as it progresses in the direction of the initial movement. Then comes a calming accompanied by horizontal movements, followed by a change of direction, and so on until stopping. When I am calm, the action begins with more horizontal lines, to which vertical movements are added. The resulting image is a kind of ongoing personal signature, corresponding to a seismograph that records the truth of a moment.”