Of David. A psalm, Installation View, MAGASIN III Jaffa, 2022, curator: Karmit Galili (photo: Noam Preisman)
Already in the lyrical connotation of the title, For David, a Psalm, artist David Adika provides a cue to the heart of the exhibition. Taken from the book of Psalms, the title questions the relationship between inspiration and creation: was King David possessed with divine inspiration before he spoke poetry, or rather poetry came first, and only then followed by divine inspiration? This reciprocal relationship between inspiration and artistic creation is central to this exhibition.
Of David. A psalm, Installation View, MAGASIN III Jaffa, 2022, curator: Karmit Galili (photo: Noam Preisman)
More than a photography exhibition, For David, a Psalm is an exhibition on photography. By photographing fellow photographers, Adika deals with the passion for photographing and the exchange of gazes between the photographer and his subjects. He examines questions of representation and esthetics while raising thoughts about the body, society, and community and how we perceive photographs.
Of David. A psalm, Installation View, MAGASIN III Jaffa, 2022, curator: Karmit Galili (photo: Noam Preisman)
Throughout his photographic practice over the years, Adika elaborated a visual language shaped through ethnic, national, local, sexual, and cultural identities while providing his work with a recognizable personal mark. His photographs not only refer to existing identities but also attempt to shape new ones.
Of David. A psalm, Installation View, MAGASIN III Jaffa, 2022, curator: Karmit Galili (photo: Noam Preisman)
In For David, a Psalm, these aspects are joined by his identity as a photographer. The exhibition includes twelve portraits of photographers; some are his friends, colleagues, and former students. The encounters with fellow artists transcend the final photographs taken. Each portrait embodies a meeting between different approaches, themes, and techniques. Just as in the endemic belief that something is robbed of the soul when the photograph is taken, Adika asks his fellow photographers for much more than their image. He uses encounters to debate the medium itself. Not unlike a wildlife photographer, he sets out to capture the members of his species to learn from them something about his own identity.
Of David. A psalm, Installation View, MAGASIN III Jaffa, 2022, curator: Karmit Galili (photo: Noam Preisman)
In addition to the portraits, the exhibition features still lifes; flowers, figurines, a shell, a book, and a jar – transitional objects that are placed between himself and his subjects, their reflection in his work. These objects also represent the domesticity coming into being through the photographs. The exhibition is constructed in the form of a house whose walls were pulled apart, a dismantled living unit, that reconstructs not only the space where the photographs were taken but also creates a deceptive space where the viewers can no longer possess their gaze, since every point in the exhibition, unfolds multiple gazes – multiple stories.
Of David. A psalm, Installation View, MAGASIN III Jaffa, 2022, curator: Karmit Galili (photo: Noam Preisman)
The photographs in the exhibition were produced using a large-format camera and analog film, to return to the material legacy of celluloid film and photographic emulsion. This procedure adds another layer of intimacy to the encounter with the photographed subjects. The ritual that is formed at the moment the photograph is taken – the moment when Adika disappears behind the camera and the subjects are asked to hold their breath and stay still – all contribute to the richness of the portraits. There is something palpable in these portraits, something pictorial and almost three-dimensional. The bodies are rendered near life-size. Walking through this dismantled house, the viewers find themselves close, maybe too close, to the sizable portraits, almost colliding with them: viewers are forced into a certain degree of intimacy. For a moment it is no longer clear who is looking at whom, with the viewer’s gaze fusing with that of Adika’s and subsequently forming a third new kind of gaze.
Karmit Galili, 2022
Of David. A psalm, Installation View, MAGASIN III Jaffa, 2022, curator: Karmit Galili (photo: Noam Preisman)
Of David. A psalm, Installation View, MAGASIN III Jaffa, 2022, curator: Karmit Galili (photo: Noam Preisman)
Of David. A psalm, Installation View, MAGASIN III Jaffa, 2022, curator: Karmit Galili (photo: Noam Preisman)
Of David. A psalm, Installation View, MAGASIN III Jaffa, 2022, curator: Karmit Galili (photo: Noam Preisman)
Of David. A psalm, Installation View, MAGASIN III Jaffa, 2022, curator: Karmit Galili (photo: Noam Preisman)
Of David. A psalm, Installation View, MAGASIN III Jaffa, 2022, curator: Karmit Galili (photo: Noam Preisman)