Nogah Engler
Engler’s haunting landscapes tread the tenuous path between the idyllic and its dissolution, attempting to simultaneously depict classical beauty and its negation. This paradox is manifested through the representation of pastoral landscapes that are fragmented and torn. To depict this conflicting situation Engler devotes considerable attention to minute details, contrasting them with broad bands of unyielding color. This is also highlighted by the blend of hard-edge geometric versus soft organic shapes and by the side-by-side use of fine ordinary and crude industrial oil paints.
This conflicting perception derives mainly from two sources. One relates to political upheavals and particularly to her family’s experiences. The other source relates to art history, especially to the northern European pastoral landscape painting tradition, as exemplified by Renaissance masters such as Jan Brueghel and Lucas Cranach, as well as to contemporary practice. Her works are also informed by the sensibility and imagery of German Romantic literature and painting, combined with the austerity of functional architecture.
Drawing on nature’s endless cycle of life and decay, as well as the destructive hand of man, her paintings embody the fragility of existence and the ultimate dichotomy of life/death that lies at the heart of the natural order. Although …
Engler’s haunting landscapes tread the tenuous path between the idyllic and its dissolution, attempting to simultaneously depict classical beauty and its negation. This paradox is manifested through the representation of pastoral landscapes that are fragmented and torn. To depict this conflicting situation Engler devotes considerable attention to minute details, contrasting them with broad bands of unyielding color. This is also highlighted by the blend of hard-edge geometric versus soft organic shapes and by the side-by-side use of fine ordinary and crude industrial oil paints.
This conflicting perception derives mainly from two sources. One relates to political upheavals and particularly to her family’s experiences. The other source relates to art history, especially to the northern European pastoral landscape painting tradition, as exemplified by Renaissance masters such as Jan Brueghel and Lucas Cranach, as well as to contemporary practice. Her works are also informed by the sensibility and imagery of German Romantic literature and painting, combined with the austerity of functional architecture.
Drawing on nature’s endless cycle of life and decay, as well as the destructive hand of man, her paintings embody the fragility of existence and the ultimate dichotomy of life/death that lies at the heart of the natural order. Although never directly depicted, the human presence is always implied and traces of man’s history are gradually disclosed across the layered strata of the painted field. Her landscape paintings are therefore an attempt to weave through the pastoral by recourse to discontinuous, diverse, and troubled memory fields. Despite their fragmented nature, the paintings nevertheless endeavour to recreate an internal unity.
Her works have been included in numerous group exhibitions such as: Enchanted Forest, at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, The Colour of Water, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Wondrous Worlds, Helena Rubinstein Pavilion, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Haifa Museum of Art.
Courtesy of Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art
