This Friday, March 1st, 2019 will mark the opening of the new solo exhibition by the multi-faceted Israeli artist Yefim Shestik. Yefim was born in Ukraine (then part of the USSR) and repatriated to Israel as a young child in 1973 as part of the large group of Soviet Jews that were finally able to leave the Soviet Union in the early 1970’s.
Yefim is a lifelong learner in the areas of plastic arts, graphic design, computerized graphics, and architecture. Throughout his life he has combined a passion for the arts with academic excellence and a passion for teaching and training the next generation of artists. Over the decades he has received multiple academic degrees in art, teaching, and architecture.
A longtime resident of northern Israel, Yefim’s sculptures combine in them the realism and the surrealism of Israeli life. Through his chosen material medium of bronze and his spiritual medium birds, Yefim combines the solid and the ephemeral, the real and the fanciful. “In my work, I explore the relationship between the world of human nature and my own emotional universe. I use the media of love, ballet, war and peace, birds, and Jewish motifs. I choose to express myself in a variety of styles, because styles are after all only a tool, a means for expressing my creativity”.
In his choice of materials, Yefim remains faithful to his credo of plasticity in the service of artistic expression. He uses bronze with a variety of coatings and surface treatments, as well as ceramics, nylon, and canvas, though hand-crafted bronze remains his medium of choice.
Yefim’s sculptures immediately draw the viewer close, enveloping them in their unique combination of intimacy and dynamicism. They create a direct viewership experience that is in many ways like a fine wine with both immediacy and a lingering complexity. The pieces work equally well in an exhibition environment, when one has the time to savor them in their fullest and in an office or a busy public space, where a mere quick glance gives the viewer that instantaneous satisfaction of having just seen something exceedingly beautiful, something that may have just made their day that much brighter, more peaceful, and simply happier.
To view Yefim’s third solo exhibition, please visit Migdal Gallery, 3 Daniel Frisch Street, Tel-Aviv. His art will be on display for 70 days starting this Friday, March 1st, 2019.
