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Adi Nes
Photographer |
| IcExcellence chosen artist since 2005 |
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"Adi Nes creates photographs of poetic drama that merge everyday life with the ideal. He draws on the visual language of Renaissance and Baroque painting, creating scenes that echo familiar icons from art history and also reflect modern concerns. In spite of the contemporary events they enact, his images use the narratives and structures of myth, with its appeal to timeless and universal experience."
Daniell Cornell, "Wall Text," Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
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| Press Reviews |
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Untitled 1999
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Born in Kiryat Gat in 1966 to a family of immigrants from Kurdistan and Iran, Adi Nes is already one of Israel's most impressive artists. Since his graduation in 1992 from the Department of Photography at Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, Adi's work has received widespread acclaim and is frequently exhibited in Israel and worldwide.
Adi is a highly insightful artist whose main subjects touch on questions of identity, particularly Israeli and male identity. The themes he chooses tend to make a local cultural statement or address universal human issues. His photographs, always staged, may be interpreted on multiple levels, and give rise to different readings among various audiences.
To date Adi has published four main photography series: "Soldiers" (1994-2000), "Boys" (2000), "Prisoners" for Vogue (2003)and "Bible Stories" (2007).
The "Prisoners" series was commissioned and published by the prestigious men's magazine Vogue Hommes International for its September 2003 issue commemorating the Twin Towers disaster. Dedicated to the Middle East, the project focused on "Six Cities, Six Viewpoints, Six Stories." Adi's story, an impressive ten-page spread, was entitled "Prisoners." Using the international language of fashion and fashion photography, Nes succeeded in portraying the complex Israeli reality in which Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers are all jointly imprisoned, with no other choice than to find a way to live together.
Adi's works have been exhibited in prestigious collections such as the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the Tel-Aviv Museum of Art; the Jewish Museum, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; and NSMVIE, Paris, as well as in various private collections in Israel and abroad.
In Febuary 2007 Nes' work The Last Supper was sold for $264,000 at a Sotheby's New York auction of Israeli art.
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| Awards and Scholarships |
| 2003 |
Constantiner Prize for Photography, Tel Aviv Museum of Art |
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| 2000 |
The Nathan Gottesdiener Foundation Israeli Art Prize, Tel Aviv Museum of Art |
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| 1999 |
Education, Culture & Sport Minister's Prize for Artists in the Visual Arts |
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| 1993 |
Sandra Jacobs's Anglo-Israeli Photographic Awards Project Scholarship, Department of Plastic Arts, Cultural Office |
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| Untitled 1999 |
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| Untitled 2000 |
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| Untitled 2003 |
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| Untitled 2003 |
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Untitled 2000
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Selected Exhibitions (2002-2006)
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| 2007 |
"Bible Stories", Jack Shainman Gallery, New York |
| 2006 |
"Art of Living: Contemporary Photography and Video from the Israel Museum", The Contemporary Jewish Museum San Francisco |
| 2006 |
"Recent Acquisitions", Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco - de Young Museum |
| 2006 |
"Ha'Tzalmania Ha'heifait", Haifa Museum of Art |
| 2006 |
"Human visions" – from the Phoenix collection, Moneart museum, Ashdod |
| 2006 |
"Men", The Museum of Israeli Art, Ramat Gan |
| 2006 |
"Beyond Richness" a new narrative in Israeli art, Israel Forum of Art Museums, Uri and Rami Nechushtan Museum, Kibbutz Ashdot Yaakov Meuchad |
| 2005 |
"Chaim – Life, Israel through the Photographers' Lens," The Laurie M. Tisch Gallery, JCC in Manhattan, New York |
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| 2005 |
"Acting Out: Invented Melodrama in Contemporary Photography," University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City |
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| 2005 |
"Dreaming Art/Dreaming Reality - Nathan Gottesdiener Foundation, The Israeli Prize: The First Decade," Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel |
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| 2005 |
"Die Neuen Hebraer," Martin-Gropius Bau, Berlin, Germany |
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| 2005 |
"Israeli Contemporary Photography," Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy |
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| 2004 |
"Recent Photographs," solo exhibition, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York |
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| 2004 |
Adi Nes – Photographs," Galerie Praz-Delavallade, Paris |
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| 2004 |
"Between Promise and Possibility: The Photographs of Adi Nes," Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Legion of Honor |
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| 2004 |
"Collective Perspectives: New Acquisitions Celebrate the Centennial," The Jewish Museum, New York |
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| 2004 |
"Common Ground: Discovering Community in 150 Years of Art, Selections from the Collection of Julia J. Norrell," Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC curator: Philip Brookman |
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| 2004 |
"Uproar of Emotions. Passions in Contemporary Photography," Museum für Photographie, Braunschweig and Kunsthalle Göppingen, Germany |
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| 2004 |
"En Guerra," Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona, Spain |
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| 2003 |
Leon Constantiner Prize for Photography, Solo Show, Tel Aviv Museum of Art |
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| 2003 |
"Saint Sebastian. A Splendid Readiness for Death," Kunsthalle Wien, Austria |
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| 2003 |
"Le Mois de la Photo," Photography Biennial, Montreal, Canada |
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| 2003 |
"Agrupémonos Todos," MARCO, Museo de Arte Contemporanéo de Vigo, Spain; ARTIUM, Centro Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporanéo |
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| 2003 |
"Recent Photographs," solo exhibition, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York |
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| 2003 |
"Revelation – Representations of Christ in Photography," Group show, Israel Museum, Jerusalem |
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| 2002 |
Solo show, FIAC Art Fair, Paris |
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| 2002 |
"Adi Nes: Photographs," solo exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago |
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| 2002 |
"Adi Nes: Photographs," solo exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego |
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Selected Exhibitions (1998-2001)
IcExcellence is supporting Adi in tailor-made artistic programs, and providing special career advancement consulting.
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| Press Reviews |
"Though its subject is masculinity, its subtext is what unrelenting
combat does to the imagination. No young artist has so vividly
captured the hidden cost of victory, the fine line between power and
fragility, the interplay of arrogance and despair that shapes
wartime identity. These portraits of Israelis bursting with a
deceptive sensuality force us to confront the complexity that the
nightly spectacle called news denies...What makes these images so compelling is the way their eroticism
shades into distress."
Richard Goldstein, "A Soldier Named Desire," The Village Voice, 2003
"What is distinctive about Adi Nes is the intelligence he applies in juxtaposing the intensity of the film
image with classical compositions drawn from the history of painting, in photographs which offer us
his view of contemporary life. This work is neither pure stylistic exercise nor a demonstration of any
kind of virtuosity. . . "
Ami Barak, "An Army of Light and Shade," Soldiers Catalogue, 2001
"His photos are lovely, erotic, even a bit disturbing."
Jesse Hamlin, "Adi Nes," San Francisco Chronicle, 2004
"There is a paradox at the heart of much of Nes' work. Though his photographs are themselves staged, they try to illuminate the gap between Israeli social realities and its ideals. When he finds a way to capture that gap in a concise way, his photographs coax you to smile at their ironies and wince at their deeper insights."
Robert L. Pincus, "When Pictures Work, They Shout Without Noise," The San Diego Chronicle
"Nes pulls rejected and repressed representations of Israeliness out of the drawer. These representations are embodied in his work in the form of homosexual masculinity. Nes advances these rejected representations out from the dusky periphery of the stage to its forefront, where they play the "leading roles" in the photographic scene - roles which were to date reserved for standard Israelis. The response is one of shock, and the observer is forced to re-evaluate his usual perception of Israeliness."
Arguments of the Judges in Awarding the Prize of the Minister of Science, Culture and
Sport 1999
Sarah Chinski, David Ginton, Meira Perry Lehman, Moshe Kupferman
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