Shay Zilberman

Hand-made collage is at the core of my art practice. This modernist technique which I adopted over the past decade has become my fundamental operating methodology. A wealth of printed  images from photography books and magazines serve as the raw material, the foundation of the work. Using these images I respond to various modes of representation of the eclectic cultural heritage. The resulting alternative narrative is imaginary, fragmented and open-ended.

The many images I deconstruct and reassemble are mostly characterized by a technical, anonymous and polished photographic gaze, evidence of a decades-long, pre-digital world. In my work, I strive to facilitate an encounter between the personal and  the collective wherein the nostalgic is manifest alongside the contemporary. The images emerge undated yet rich with multiple layers of time, materiality, and ideas.

The work always begins on the intimate scale of my book collections. It rests on a daily work practice, a kind of collage journal. The meeting point between the various images is often dictated by chance, a blind date, and constructed from the relationship between the materiality of the paper and the given printed image.