Yuval Pudik

Enduring Patiently 6
Graphite on paper and collage
22 × 30 inches
2009


Yuval Pudik
"Enduring Patiently"
June 5 - July 30, 2009
Opening reception June 5, 7-10pm
Silverman Gallery


A reference to the Book of Revelations, “Enduring Patiently” speaks to the Judeo-Christian tradition of suffering and martyrdom, an idea Pudik utilizes to interrogate archetypes of masculine authority. This body of work draws from the rich pageantry of European courtly dress, developing the artist’s meditation on the body, social costuming, and the shifting of identity. Delving into a darker topography, Pudik engages questions of confinement and restriction through his detailed renderings of monarchs—male figures laden with historically charged accoutrements of mastery. Armor, lavish capes, furs, and gauntlets are meshed with jet engines, megaphones and guns to create fantastical bodily assemblages that are as radiant as they are grotesque. Through these almost obscenely excessive figures, Pudik creates a visual archeology that ultimately exposes the ways in which power ossifies into the momentous, yet fragile surfaces that constitute the social realm.