
Jossef Krispel: Ghosts

The Rappaport Prize for a Young Israeli Artist 2008
ossef Krispel’s paintings sway between yearnings for a perfect, constant, structured existence reminiscent of the 18th Century world, and a deconstructed, detached, devastated existence built on the shaky foundations of Post-Modernism. The craving for perfection on the one hand, and the awareness of existential defeatism on the other hand, together stitch “puzzles” attesting to an insatiable hunger for a hidden image, as well as to fragments of images that have lost relevance to the whole from which they have been plucked, and to which they can no longer return.
The common denominator of all these detached images excised from some contemporary limitless encyclopedia which sought to touch upon every possible entry, yet equally split, isolated and mutilated each of its entries – is the very painting, the very act of painting. This act seems to bring back to life images on the verge of disappearance, in danger of extinction, and their vitality is the indicator of human passion with all its desires and nightmares, from which humanity has been seeking to wake from the beginning of time.

Jossef Krispel, Three Hunters, 2008
Oil on canvas, 130×160 cm
Private collection, Tel Aviv
Photo: Meidad Suchowolski