Adi Nes epitomizes the generation of Israeli artists who emerged in the 1990s, whose work challenges national myths and conventional gender roles. Often drawing inspiration from art history and mythology, Nes’s works in Art of Living are part of his latest project derived from biblical figures and are exhibited here together for the first time in a world premiere. The photographs, Job, 2005, Noah, 2005, and Abraham and Isaac, 2005 are reminiscent of Caravaggio’s depiction of saints in the guise of modern-day men—though in Nes’s case, the contemporary setting is his native Israel. These works also importantly address the subjects of poverty and homelessness, indicative of the artist’s commitment to using his photographs to arouse discussion around issues of social justice. The photographs reflect his shrewd and meticulous stage work as he artfully constructs each one of the images. His photography reveals to us a critical eye on the time and place in which he lives.

Adi Nes on his work:

"Enclosed you will find a small sampling of articles from the past few years which touch upon my art exhibits in Israeli and American museums. You will also find a brochure produced by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego which features a comprehensive and interesting article (at the back of the brochure) reviewing the style and major themes of my work. I've also attached two newspaper interviews with me so you can gain a more personal perspective of my art.

To date, my work has comprised four series of staged photographs dealing with a central issue: questions of identity. The first photographic series I created was entitled Soldiers. It was exhibited in many places throughout the world and gained critical acclaim. The most famous picture from that series, Untitled 1999, (the Last Supper) sold at Sotheby's in New York last year for $102,000. My staged photographs are oversized and often recall well-known scenes from Art History and Western Civilization combined with personal experiences based on my life as a gay youth growing up in a small town on the periphery of Israeli society.

My next series was Boys, based on staged scenes of street life of youth in tenement housing projects. Each photo relates to a story from Greek Mythology dealing with male identity.

In 2003 the magazine, Vogue Hommes Inter. published my subsequent series which focused on male prisoners. This series was exhibited in various galleries and museums throughout the United States, Europe and Israel. The theme which framed this entire series was the Prison; each picture rendered a different interpretation of the notion of imprisonment (being imprisoned in our mind, being the jailer, one's "ego" as a type of prison…).

Currently I'm working on a new exhibition of photographs entitled Bible Stories. This series, which reflects the difficult economic and social condition I sense in my place of work, features ordinary people of the low income class who portray Biblical heroes in various ironic situations. Here, also, the scenes are based in part on images of Renaissance masters known throughout the Western world while referring at the same time to contemporary photography."

Reviews:

Bible Stories

The main characters in Adi Nes' new series, Bible Stories, are street people, the homeless, the lower class, people who find themselves at the margins of society.

In previous series Nes dealt with issues of identity: specifically masculinity and Israeliness. In this new series, he deals with people who have lost their identities.

In previous series the soldiers, for example, were photographed in wide open spaces or in military camps, the youth were photographed in peripheral, dark neighborhoods, and the prisoners in a studio mock-up of a closed prison. This time though, the backdrop for Bible Stories is the sprawling city whose inhabitants are run-down and whose streets are empty. The reality for these characters is miserable, depressing, and hopeless.

Yet these are not just any people. Each one of the subjects of this new series is based on a Bible story: Abraham is pushing Isaac—both are homeless—in a shopping cart filled with recyclable plastic bottles; Elijah is likewise homeless, an old man laying on a bench with all his personal belongings bundled in a plastic bag under his head; Noah is drunk and naked, rolled-up beside a DVD rental machine; Hagar is a street beggar; Jonathan is a battered boy in David's arms—a street urchin.

The people Nes chose to photograph are not really street people, but actors. They portray anti-heroes and represent Biblical characters at the low points of their lives.

This new series of Adi Nes' photographs expose the low point to which Israeli society has sunk after the revolutionary transition from striving to be a utopian, egalitarian society with socialist values and an ethos of caring for one another, to a conquering, capitalistic, alienating society in which deep and unnecessary social gaps abound.

By juxtaposing identity-less, homeless figures against the mythical foundation of Bible stories, Adi Nes contrasts the current Israeli reality with the history and mythology of the Chosen People and projects these worrisome images of Israel's social reality in the 21st century back onto the nation's past.

Thus, therefore, is the social reality of Israel in 2006 portrayed as an entity wiping-out its own illustrious past.

Abraham & Isaac - This photograph recalls Duane Hanson's pop sculpture Supermarket Shopper, 1970. In Hanson's work the woman was made-up (cosmetically) to the point of being ridiculous, and portrayed pushing a cart full of food. Here, Abraham is portrayed as a neglected, penniless, and scruffy man, pushing a supermarket shopping cart full of bottles for recycling, upon which his young son, Isaac, lays serenely. It's not coincidental that Nes' Abraham resembles Caravaggio's Abraham. While in Caravaggio's version the boy is crying out, in Nes' photograph the lad's silence reveals his acceptance of his fate.

Noah – The Bible tells that after Noah left the Ark, God gave him grapes (and, consequently, intoxicating wine). In his drunken stupor he rolled around naked and was discovered in this undignified state by one of his sons. Michelangelo painted this scene in which the drunk Noah is surrounded by his three sons. Adi Nes decided to situate the naked, uncircumcised figure beside DVD dispensers, thereby obtaining two goals. First, he emphasized the alienation expressed by this image. Secondly, he intimates that we, the viewers, who look at this naked man, are engaging in the same sin his sons committed. Apparently, we, the viewers, need Art as an intermediary in order to see the street people we try not to see.

Job – In this photograph an old man who could look like Job stares straight into the camera with a twisted mouth gasping for a breath of air. Adi Nes' father died of lung cancer a year before this picture was taken. The person photographed here is Adi's uncle, his father's brother; the two looked very much alike. Nes relates how he worked with his uncle throughout the session in order to get his uncle to look like his father, who fought for every last breath of his life. Unfortunately, shortly after these pictures were taken, Adi's uncle also succumbed to lung cancer.

The tension in the pictures is based on the conflicts between the difficulty of daily life on the one hand, and the myth of the Chosen People on the other and how they're represented by classical painters like Caravaggio, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt and others.

In the process of this work Nes was influenced by the Italian baroque painter Caravaggio. Caravaggio was against the classical, idealistic way in which Biblical stories had been painted up to that time. He took common people from the street and used them as models in order to paint more realistically rather than idealistically as was the custom until his time. He thus created new interpretations and iconography which garnered him scathing criticism by the Church.

As a type of gesture to this maligned yet also appreciated painter, Adi Nes transforms his biblical characters—which have been sources of admiration and holiness—to people on the margins of society: homeless street people, people who have experienced economic and social trauma. Nes is trying to emphasize the marginal footprints, poverty, misery, distress and thereby create characters who are anti-heroes.

When the first photographers arrived from Europe and the United States to photograph the Holy Land a tradition developed in which biblical stories were the basis for tourist pictures. Yet even in the 19th century marginal people become photographic models, while in the contemporary photographs of Adi Nes models play the parts of marginal people.

This style is similar to what Adi Nes has employed in earlier works which were first brought to light in Vogue Hommes International (2003) when instead of dressing models in name brand fashions, he put the name brand fashions on ordinary people.

This photographic series, still being developed, will be shown in its entirety in January, 2007, at Adi Nes' one man show at the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York.