STERN EVYATAR

-EVYATAR STERN-

 

Education

  • 1980 – Bezalel Academy of Art, Jerusalem

  • 1983 – Culture and Art Studies, Haifa University

  • 1986 – M.A. in Fine Arts, Paris University 8, France

    • Thesis: “The Impact of the First Lebanon War on My Artistic Work as the Son of Holocaust Survivors”

Exhibitions

  • 1982 – Group Exhibition, Hall 9 Anti-Lyrical, Artist House, Jerusalem, Israel

  • 1982 – Group Exhibition in honor of the opening, Ehud Ha’am 90 Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel

  • 1983 – Biennale for Young Artists, Haifa Museum, Israel

  • 1984 – Group Exhibition, Ehud Ha’am 90 Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel

  • 1984 – Group Exhibition, Naomi Givon Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel

  • 1984 – Group Exhibition, Kibbutz Shafayim, Israel

  • 1985 – Solo Exhibition, Studio Yavne 6A, Tel Aviv, Israel

  • 1989 – Group Exhibition, La Cave des Artistes, New York, U.S.A.

  • 1992 – Salon de Mai, Group Exhibition, Grand Palais, Paris, France

  • 1992 – Representative of France, Biennale for French-speaking Countries, San-Senart, Paris, France

  • 1994 – Art Focus, Contemporary Israeli Art, Constant Gallery, Israel

  • 1994 – Reminiscences and Obsession, Artist House, Jerusalem, Israel

  • 1995 – Interdisciplinary event combining choreography with dancer Yael Orni, video work, and video art pieces accompanying the performance, Artist House, Tel Aviv, Israel

  • 1999 – Principles in Existence, Part I, Kibbutz Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel

  • 1999 – Memories and Obsession, Artist House, Jerusalem, Israel

  • 1999 – On a Tightrope – Balances, Arad Museum, Israel

  • 2003 – Solo Exhibition, Danon Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel

  • 2003 – Venice: Artist Book Exhibition in honor of the 50th Anniversary of the Venice Biennale. The exhibition later traveled to Germany and to the United Nations, New York, U.S.A.

  • 2004 – Constant House, Ramat Gan, Israel

  • 2004 – Beliefs and Legacies, Part I, Kadima Gallery, Israel

  • 2005 – The Bubble Project, Alma Gallery, Quebec, Canada

  • 2008 – Solo Exhibition, Danon Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel

Awards

  • 1985 – Scholarship for Abroad, Council for Culture and Art

  • 1998 – Rothschild Family Prize for Sculpture, England

Evyatar Stern’s work unfolds as a kind of visual diary, as Tali Tamir noted in her writing on a previous exhibition – a diary in which personal biography merges with cultural and collective memory. Whereas in earlier works the archival strata and historical materials were emphasized as the foundation of the artistic practice, here a new layer of materiality and rituality has been added.

The work functions as an “autobiographical map” – layers of texts, stamps, maps, images, drawings, natural materials, and wax. Each layer evokes a fragment of memory – personal, cultural, or historical – and together they generate the sense of a living, breathing archive.

At the center of the piece stands a raw tree branch, both physical and symbolic spine, stabilizing the composition as a life axis connecting earth and sky. The toothpicks protruding from it function as branches, veins, or channels of energy, charging the work with the dimension of a mystical diagram. Alongside this, the image of a face with sunglasses points to the artist’s direct presence in the work, while schematic figures, a hat, and other collective images create a dialogue between the personal “I” and figures drawn from near and distant histories.

The material layer of wax imbues the piece with a double tension: on the one hand it preserves, protects, and fixes; on the other, it conceals, blurs, and withholds. This addition shifts the work from an archival-documentary gaze toward the experience of a sacred, almost ritual object – oscillating between exposure and concealment.

As Tamir has observed with regard to earlier works, the tension between the private and the collective, the archival and the intimate, is a central axis in Stern’s visual language. In this work, that tension is intensified through the use of wood and wax – materials that charge the surface with the presence of a body of memory, a personal site that is also anthropological.

Here, autobiography is not presented as a linear story but as a collage of identities and layers:

  • The face represents personal identity.

  • The maps and flowing lines trace both inner and outer journeys.

  • The branch functions as spine, root, and life axis.

  • The stamps and texts anchor the experience in historical and cultural space.

  • The wax serves as a material of preservation and concealment, imbuing the work with an aura of sanctity.

The result is a poetic-personal document that moves between personal expression and collective resonance. It extends the line identified by Tali Tamir in earlier exhibitions, while adding a dimension of material rituality that transforms the work into a living site of memory – at once personal and collective.