Yuval Yairi (Israel 1961 -)


About

Yuval Yairi (Born in 1961, Tel-Aviv, Israel)
Lives and works in Jerusalem, Israel

Yuval Yairi is an Israeli-born Jerusalem-based contemporary artist working in the media of photography and video. Yairi studied visual arts at Wizo-Hadassa in Haifa, Israel. He has been an art director and graphic designer and works in documentary and corporate film production.

Yairi’s photographic technique is a meticulous process of capturing environments. His works resemble photographic mosaics and are created by a process of frame-by-frame shooting and then combining and revising these images. The subjects of Yairi’s work relate to a historical, cultural, personal or political place and they express an artistic comment on human observation and the natural process of memory. Upon first glance his compositions appear tranquil and still. With deeper inspection the grid-like pattern of the combined fragments of each shot, grant a sense of continuous time to a distorted environment.

In his series Palaces of Memory, Yuval Yairi challenged the “Decisive Moment” principle championed by Henri Cartier-Bresson. In his works, such as MemoVan #4, Yairi assembles digital collages from hundreds of different angles to create an alternate vision of reality. For Yairi, capturing a single decisive moment would mean the possibility of overseeing the moment that proceeded or the one that followed. Hence, his images are a poetic ode to the passing of time. Moreover, the seams delineating the different images are not emitted out of the final image. Like the construction of memory from disparate flashbacks, the different images collaborate to present a unified panoramic view.

Yairi’s work has been exhibited at The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2004); San Diego Natural History Museum, California (2007); Three Gorges Museum, Chongqing, China (2008), and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel (2011).

His works are in permanent museums collections and private collectors worldwide, including the Israel Museum, Tel Aviv Museum, Livnat in Holland, Naggar in England, Berman and Bloch in Los Angeles and Constantiner in New York.

He is a recipient of the Ministry of Culture Award for Visual Arts, 2017.

Exhibition

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2019 Cyphers and Cypresses, Fabienne Levy, Lausanne
2016 Surveyor, Epsten Gallery, Kansas City, US
2016 Surveyor, Zemack Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
2013 LAND, Zemack Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
2011 WORK (The Israel Museum Renewal Project), Zemack Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
2008 Palaces of Memory, Andrea Meislin Gallery, NY, US
2007 Palaces of Memory, Alon Segev Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
2005 Forevermore, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
2005 Forevermore, Andrea Meislin Gallery, New York, US


GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2020 Up and down the mountain, The new gallery, Jerusalem
2020 Ministry of Culture Award Winners, Ashdod Art Museum
2020 J20, Zemack Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv
2018 Sambation, Jewish Culture Festival, Kraków
2018 Tzurah, Jewish museum of Casale Monferrato
2017 Dangerous Art, Haifa Museum of Art
2017 Slipped (my) mind, Binyamin Gallery, Tel Aviv
2017 Undefined Spaces, Podbielski Contemporary, Berlin
2017 Anonym-X: The End of the Privacy Era / Street View, group exhibition, Haifa Museum of Art
2016 Quest, Group Exhibition, Tel Hai Museum of Photography
2016 Vaccum @ International Photography Festival 2016, Jaffa Port
2016 40,30,20, Zemack Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv
2016 ABC – Landscape in 3 Parts, Group exhibition, Binyamin Gallery, Tel Aviv
2015 Quest, Group Exhibition, Benyamini Contemporary Ceramics Center, Tel Aviv
2015 The Tel Aviv Transcripts, with Hadas Ophrat, The Lobby – Art Space, Tel-Aviv
2015 Sanctuary, Group Exhibition, Orlando Museum of Art
2014 The Benevolent Tree, Group Exhibition, The Umm el-Fahem Art Gallery
2013 Collecting Dust, Contemporary Israeli Art, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
2012 Wonderland, Group Exhibition, Chagall Artists House, Haifa
2012 A Visual Journey through Imagination, Holden Luntz Gallery, Palm Beach, FLA
2012 Nomansland: Trilogy of Journeys, The Petach Tikva Museum
2011 Roundabout – Face to Face, Tel-Aviv Museum of Art
2011 Kept in Memory, Dwek Gallery, Mishkenot Sha’ananim, Jerusalem
2011 Life: A User’s Manual, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
2011 New in Photography: Recent Acquisitions, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
2011 Purity & Danger, Group Exhibition, Zemack Contemporary Art, Tel-Aviv
2011 The Four Seasons, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
2010 Roundabout, City Gallery Wellington, New Zealand
2010 Looking in, Looking out: The Window in Art, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
2010 Now We are Six, Andrea Meislin Gallery, NY
2008 Inside Israel, Three Gorges Museum, Chongqing, China
2008 Israel is Real, Contemporary photography from Israel, Epsten Gallery, Kansas
2008 Living Together, regional group exhibition, (Ireland, England, Bulgaria, Romania, Armenia, Georgia, Greece)
2008 @60.art.israel.world, Magnes Museum, Berkeley, California
2008 The homes of others, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem 2007
2008 Jerusalem, Surface Fractures, The Jerusalem Artist’s House, Jerusalem
2007 Contemporary Israeli Photography, San Diego Natural History Museum
2007 Moods and Modes in Israeli Photography, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
2007 Art for Aid, Zuiderkerk, Amsterdam, Netherdlands
2007 Current Visions part 2, Andrea Meislin Gallery, NY, US
2006 Heara 10, Science Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
2006 Lanterna Magica, Metaphysical Light in Israeli Photography, Bat-Yam Museum of Art, Bat Yam, Israel
2006 d.t-minimum time, Qbox Gallery, Athens, Greece
2004 New Exposures: Recent Acquisitions in Photography, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
2004 Outside In, Sotheby’s, London, England