Ilan Adar is a versatile autodidact artist, painter, sculptor, and photographer who combines diverse materials with unique personal techniques developed over the years. His portfolio consists of various formats, featuring both two and three-dimensional contemporary pieces. Inspired by a variety of social and cultural issues, with his ability to delve deep into native and ancient cultures, his figurative art is both complex and diverse.
Born in 1969, Ilan Adar lives and works in Tel Aviv. His artworks have been exhibited in Israel as well as other countries around the globe.
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Thursday, 18th August until Sunday 21st August
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“The Golden Times of my Tribe”, acrylic, on canvas, 130 x 105 cm
The body of work entitled "My Tribe“ combines images and issues that have occupied Ilan Adar over the years, while creating an imaginary and fantastic world, yet familiar. At the center of the series is an imaginary tribe, a tribe of hunters that reminds us of natives from different primitive cultures. Drawing the figures with a type of ornamentation that covers the entire body is reminiscent of the Maori, the tattooed natives of New Zealand and the Polynesian Islands, but the characteristics also have features from Asia and Africa. What comes to mind, for example, are members of the well-known Israeli artist Sigalit Landau’s “Tribe”, who lived and labored on the shores of the Dead Sea, from her exhibition "The Infinite Solution" (Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2004), or the native tribe living on the Pandora moon in James Cameron’s film "Avatar" (2009). Adar joins here an artistic and literary tradition that deals with the „noble savage", the native who enchanted Western man from the late 19th century to the present day. However, the artist is not satisfied with nostalgic admiration, indeed he identifies with the subjects of his paintings and sees himself as part of the tribe. There is a latent desire here to turn the wheel back, to a simple and basic reality of life, on a human scale and with a strong connection to nature. Some figures in the paintings look like hybrids of man and plant (Fertility Wisdom), and other figures, winged like angels, may express a longing for the passing naivety in our world. Adar’s hunters hunt for their sustenance, engaged in necessary killing for survival, on a small and local scale, as opposed to widespread and mass killing, driven by economic, religious, racial, and other forces, which characterizes the modern age. The paintings are multi-layered; these can be interpreted as layers of history, or as a kind of illustrated documentation of the history of the tribe, as we find in the remains of ancient cultures. In the background are a kind of devices or integrated systems whose purpose is unclear, a kind of laboratory devices or interlocking tools, hybrid and surrealistic, with signs of modernity. It seems that Adar confronts here old and new, but even the new characterizes the industrial revolution more than the technological revolution of our days. The whole body of work seems to be a kind of prophetic vision, a warning as to the direction that humanity is taking in the 21st century, a direction in which the gap and alienation between human beings is widening, leading to the destruction of the social structure as we know it.
With the "New World Web 3 movement area just started, Adar turn „My Tribe“ into "Our Tribe" and makes human brotherhood accessible in an original and artistic way, which is not related to familiar nationalities, religions and sexual orientations - but creates an allegory for our world where there is a place for everyone to join and live in.
“The Search” (Tripdych), acrylic on canvas, 220 x 180 cm
Artist Statement:
“The Shaman”, acrylic on canvas, 130 x 105 cm
"Ever since I can remember, I have been expressing my passions, feelings and thoughts in drawings. You could say that I and my artistic creation have evolved together and in parallel, so that the main body of work I have developed in recent years called „My Tribe" represents for me who I am today, my hopes, beliefs, and fears, as a person, as a creator, as a husband and as a father.
Nature in all its expressions and variety never ceases to amaze me, and I believe in the shared destiny and mutual responsibility of all living beings towards the future of Earth. We were all created from one source but evolved and clustered as different tribes. "My Tribe" consists of various creatures, some of which are hybridized: human-plant or human-machine. Each has its own unique characteristics and abilities that define it and at the same time contribute to strengthening the group. A group, or tribe, has a healing power, and it helps the individual to evolve, change, and improve.
My hope is that the art I create will not be introverted but will appeal to different audiences at several levels of understanding and identification. The unique artistic language I develop in my work can function as a means of communication between people, as a way of sharing feelings and emotions.”
“Energy Observer”, acrylic on canvas, 130 x 105 cm
Our gratitude goes to the Embassy of Israel in Bern for taking over the patronate of this exhibition and for all their efforts and support, to the Suvretta House who hosts the exhibition in their premises in St. Moritz, to the Gesellschaft Schweiz Israel as well as to all the other anonymous donors who are generously sponsoring this project.
