Zadok Ben-David – Human Nature

Zadok Ben-David’s inspi­ra­tion as an artist derives from nature, sci­ence, mag­ic and illu­sion. From Evo­lu­tion and The­o­ry (1999), where he explores sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies, to the psy­cho­log­i­cal instal­la­tion Black­field (2006−09), with thou­sands of flow­ers, and the mag­i­cal The Oth­er Side of Mid­night (2013), which incor­po­rates thou­sands of insects, one of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of Ben-David’s work is the use of mul­ti­plic­i­ty as an organ­is­ing prin­ci­ple. He cre­ates an alter­nate ampli­fied view­ing space where the rela­tion­ship between view­er (human) and art­work (nature) is both sacred and desta­bi­liz­ing. The new ongo­ing work, Peo­ple I Saw But Nev­er Met, fea­tures thou­sands of minia­tures of peo­ple whom he has pho­tographed and drawn dur­ing his trav­els, sug­gest­ing ways in which we are both iso­lat­ed yet always close togeth­er. Along with out­door works, com­plet­ed over a twen­ty-year peri­od, this new book doc­u­ments these four instal­la­tions in all their mag­i­cal detail.

Felic­i­ty Fen­ner is Direc­tor of UNSW Gal­leries, Syd­ney, Aus­tralia. She has curat­ed over thir­ty exhi­bi­tions of Aus­tralian and inter­na­tion­al art and is a found­ing mem­ber of the City of Sydney’s Pub­lic Art Advi­so­ry Pan­el. Her most recent book, Run­ning the City, was pub­lished in 2017. 

Yael Guilat is Head of the Pro­gram of Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Stud­ies in the Human­i­ties and the Arts, Fac­ul­ty of Grad­u­ate Stud­ies, Oran­im Aca­d­e­m­ic Col­lege of Edu­ca­tion, Israel. She has a PhD from Tel Aviv University. 

John McDon­ald is art crit­ic for the Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald. He was Head of Aus­tralian Art at the Nation­al Gallery of Aus­tralia from 1999 – 2000, and from 2002-04 was direc­tor of New­con­tem­po­raries, a non-com­mer­cial gallery in Sydney. 

Fumio Nan­jo is Direc­tor of the Mori Art Muse­um, Japan. He was a jury mem­ber of the Gold­en Lion Prize, Venice Bien­nale (2005), and has been the Com­mis­sion­er or Artis­tic Direc­tor for sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al Bien­nale and Tri­en­nale includ­ing Taipei, Yoko­hama, Sin­ga­pore, Ken­poku and Honolulu.