Questions of Forgiveness

APT artist Gideon Rubin is opening "Questions of Forgiveness" a new solo show at "GALERIE KARSTEN GREVE" of Paris.
 

Text of Gideon Rubin in December 2015.
 
The recent issue of "Jewish Quarterly" published one of my works cover. The title of this issue, questions of Forgiveness, had to cover my work. Painting (Untitled, 76 x 61cm, oil on canvas) was carried out earlier this year. This is a police officer holding a stick and facing a young woman from behind. Barefoot and dressed in pink, her eyes are covered with a yellow headband. She holds a handgun. The picture from a magazine, the number one "Life" certainly of seventy years. I reworked the image of the magazine, by painting the background and eliminating certain indices such as the crowd, a background in building or textual elements that could have helped the viewer to read this image. We find ourselves left in an ambiguous situation, full of unanswered questions. Who is this woman ? Is this real or staged? Remembrance or fiction? This is exactly the ambiguity I want.
 
Right now, I think my work is appropriately located in this environment because of outstanding issues, when an image is found halfway between representation and abstraction. The new works created for this exhibition should be read as a newspaper, no specific chronological order. The time and memory mingle fluidly while my usual obsession for imaging the early twentieth century tends to slightly more recent past, that of the fifties, sixties and seventies. As for the girl in yellow blindfolded, the other characters have also started to occupy my paintings recurrently. From international magazines and anonymous photographs found these representations, partly imagined, such as children with gas masks and harlequin accompanied me for years. Some, like the harlequin, only managed to appear in my paintings only recently.
 
Two poems by Primo Levi were published in the same issue of Jewish Quarterly: I was particularly touched by one, entitled "The child of Pompeii," which ends:
 
"Nothing remains of the schoolgirl in Hiroshima,
Shadow nailed to the wall by the light of a thousand suns.
Mighty of the land, new poisons masters
Sad secret keepers of the final thunder
The sky plagues us more than enough.
Before pressing the finger, stop, think. "