Untitled (Moshik), Tel Aviv 2007 [1/42] 

As the tart panteth after the water brooks  2007

"David Adika photographs visual manifestations upon which he chances, whether outside or at home: flowers, trees and foliage, knickknacks, still life of foodstuffs, corners in domestic rooms. And also, on occasion, not as frequently, women or men who in the photographs assume the status of still life. The photographic context domesticates them, as it were, into a vase. The photograph is always spectacular. Its objects are possibly the last visual manifestations to be attributed spectacularity, or alternatively, the very last on which the eye falls at all – a dry leaf, a dusty flower, watermelons in a plastic bowl on a balcony, French fries on a paper napkin in a bowl, a single cracker (!) on a marble countertop, a torn poster with an image of Beyoncé. Regardless of their status in reality, the photographer’s eye rests on them – with compassion, empathy, devotion, infatuation – and from the moment he fixes
them in the camera’s digital memory, the most trifling of dry leaves acquires a super-status, the status of one-and-only. An onion floating
on a white background (probably a bookstand, though barely noticeable) annexes Superman qualities and a cloudlet in the sky, as well as the very aspiration to hover. A pineapple on a table acquires dimensions at once monumental and monstrous. Yellow daffodils around a trunk are heart-rending in their solitude and brittleness…
Daffodils and roses, arum lilies and other inflorescence in pink and red. More than anything – more than food, objects, and backyards – Adika repeatedly photographs flowers, in vases and on the city streets, as a pattern on a tablecloth or on the fabric of a dress. Traversing the realms of flowers involves a risk. There are traps everywhere – kitsch, banality, the commonplace, and the hackneyed. The danger of slipping down the slopes of the self-evident, runs against another, equally grave risk – of surrendering the greatest and most vibrant of secrets at the core of artistic practice, which this time also bursts forth through the title that Adika gave the series of photographs in the exhibition – “As the hart panteth after the water brooks”; and the moving continuation of the verse (Psalms 42:1) which was left out of the caption, yet flutters silently above the photographs: “so panteth my soul after thee, O God,” or plays to the sounds of Mendelssohn’s cantata for this psalm. The title encapsulates the essence of Adika’s quest in art: to seek the divine in onion and French fries, in the withered and the hindmost, the insignificant and ridiculed. The photographic medium is fundamental to this yearning which motivates him in art – the manifestations of beauty
are tantamount to photographic flashes. He discusses both in terms of “flickering” beauty appears momentarily and disappears, like the shutter which captures a sight and closes. It is tempting to take this analogy further: beauty as a vast reservoir of images transpiring in the digital chip, without medium and without matter. Until they are printed on paper, the images are under the threat of loss and erasure. Their existence is fragile. Those that were printed and transformed into photographs are, in themselves, flickers from the inexhaustible reservoir, whose bulk will never materialize. Its bulk is destined to remain unknown…
Adika, as might be gathered, is totally committed to the photographic medium. He creates new images  Adika’s practice may be viewed as homage to photography, a vote of confidence in the medium. He goes to shoot outdoors – even if the “great outdoors” is but the boulevard outside his home or his parents’ house in Jerusalem – thus preserving yet another romantic act.
Adika has an affinity with visual manifestations whose status in the real world is marginal or negligible. He operate like sharp-sighted hunters in an image jungle: everything around is luring, whispering, tempting,tingling, darting in one’s eye…
but his arrow will hit only something very specific. Only his dart-like eye will identify the specific cascade, or the specific onion, or the flower at the specific angle, and then crown it. Beauty from the gutters".

(Ruti Direktor, Curator) 

Untitled (Beyonce), NY 2007 [2/42]

Untitled (Rice Cake), LA 2006 [3/42]

Untitled (Albino peacock), Safed 2007 [4/42]

Untitled (Albino peacock), Safed 2006 [5/42]

Untitled (Albino peacock), Safed 2006 [6/42]

Untitled (Watermelons), Jerusalem 2007 [7/42]

Untitled (Orange), Tel Aviv 2007 [8/42]

Untitled (Poster), London 2006 [9/42]

Untitled (Rose), LA 2006 [10/42]

Untitled  Tel Aviv 2007 [11/42]

Untitled (Brazil), Jerusalem 2007 [12/42]

Untitled, Glasgow 2006 [13/42]

Untitled (Watermelons), Jerusalem 2007 [14/42]

Untitled, Tel Aviv 2007 [15/42]

Untitled, Glasgow 2006 [16/42]

Untitled, Tel Aviv [17/42]

Untitled, LA 2006 [18/42]

Untitled (Room Service) Las Vegas 2006 [19/42]

Untitled (Fried) LA 2006 [20/42]

Untitled (Onion), Tel Aviv 2006 [21/42]

Untitled (Dad's Office) Jerusalem 2007 [22/42]

Untitled (Ananas) Tel Aviv 2007 [23/42]

Untitled, NY 2006 [24/42]

Untitled, Tel Aviv 2006 [25/42]

Untitled, Jerusalem 2007 [26/42]

Untitled, LA 2006 [27/42]

Untitled, Tel Aviv 2007 [28/42]

Untitled, LA 2006 [29/42]

Untitled, LA 2006 [30/42]

Untitled (Victoria Hana) Tel Aviv 2006 [31/42]

Untitled, Tel Aviv 2006 [32/42]

Untitled, Tel Aviv 2006 [33/42]

Untitled, Glasgow 2006 [33/42]

Untitled (Albino peacock), Safed 2006 [35/42]

Untitled, Glasgow 2006 [36/42]

Untitled, London 2006 [37/42]

Untitled, LA 2006 [38/42]

Untitled, LA 2006 [39/42]

Untitled, Tel Aviv 2006 [40/42]

Untitled, Tel Aviv 2006 [41/42]

Untitled, Tel Aviv 2006 [42/42]

"As the hart panteth after the water brooks", Installation View,

'Territoires' - The 6th Biennale of International Photography, Liege - Belgium [Curator: Dorothee Luczak] 2008

"As the hart panteth after the water brooks", Installation View,

'Territoires' - The 6th Biennale of International Photography, Liege - Belgium [Curator: Dorothee Luczak] 2008

"As the hart panteth after the water brooks", Installation View,

'Territoires' - The 6th Biennale of International Photography, Liege - Belgium [Curator: Dorothee Luczak] 2008

"As the hart panteth after the water brooks", Installation View,

'Territoires' - The 6th Biennale of International Photography, Liege - Belgium [Curator: Dorothee Luczak] 2008

"As the hart panteth after the water brooks", Installation View,

'Territoires' - The 6th Biennale of International Photography, Liege - Belgium [Curator: Dorothee Luczak] 2008

"As the hart panteth after the water brooks", Installation View,

'Come Thou Beauty', University of Haifa, Faculty of Humanities, The Art Gallery [ Curator: Ruti Direktor ]  2007

"As the hart panteth after the water brooks", Installation View,

"As the hart panteth after the water brooks", Installation View,

"As the hart panteth after the water brooks", Installation View,

"As the hart panteth after the water brooks", Installation View,