Museo Boncompagni Ludovisi, photographed by Vartivar Jaklian
After the Tribes, detail, Museo Boncompagni Ludovisi, photographed by Vartivar Jaklian
After the Tribes, Domaine du Castel Vineyards, Jerusalem Mountains, photographed by Michael Amar
Upcoming Exhibition
Following her exhibition at Museo di Palazzo Grimani in Venice last year, Beverly Barkat now boldly explores and connects with the roots of Israel. For the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the State of Israel, Polo Museale del Lazio and the Israeli Embassy in Italy have invited her to exhibit at Museo Boncompagni Ludovisi in the very heart of ancient Rome.
Exhibition title: After the Tribes
Vernissage: October 10, 2018 (by invitation only)
Dates: October 11 – December 31, 2018
The exhibition is curated by Dr. Giorgia Calò and supported by the Nomas Foundation.
Studio
Beverly Barkat started working in her current Jerusalem studio in 2009. She has been exploring drawing and painting with mixed media on paper, self-stretched canvases and PVC, while incorporating skills and techniques acquired from the various art disciplines in which she specialized. Her two-floor studio is located in Jerusalem’s centre and overlooks the Architecture Department of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design.
Artwork
Barkat’s early works were largely figurative and in keeping with the traditional Western genres. Around 2009, she made a turn towards formal abstraction and although she continued to draw from life, she started to deconstruct the figure and at the same time, capture movement on a two-dimensional surface with dynamic lines.
In 2014, her series of paintings inspired by Japanese calligraphy earned her the Curator’s Award at the 28th International Exhibition of Art & Design in Kyoto. A year later, Barkat started experimenting with new techniques, application methods and materials, the most prominent being the use of transparent PVC sheets. Sally Haftel Naveh, the curator of her 2017 exhibition in Venice, comments on her use of this new material in the exhibition catalogue:
“The PVC sheets that Barkat picks for her paintings differ from other more conventional supports first and foremost in their transparency, so that while each side carries its own self-contained painterly motif, it echoes at the same time the one found overleaf. The work process progresses on both sides simultaneously, in constant symbiosis, free of any predetermined precepts or hierarchies.”