Spears

2005, Ongoing
Sizes range from 60 inches to 19 feet long.

“Sword into Ploughshares, Spears into Art”

Swords, slingshots, arrows and bows, shields and spears - these were the toys of my childhood. I made them myself and the adventure of making them was as exciting as actually playing with them. I remember walking around with a sword dangling down my hips and a slingshot in my back pocket, my hands gripping onto the spear, ready to hurl it an the next imaginary enemy. I was exploring my fascination with the notion of survival and letting my imagination conquer my anxieties about dying and killing. I used to shoot birds with slingshots and then nurse them back to health and set them free. Later I became a soldier in the Israeli army and was brought face to face with the real instruments of war. Now in my artistic exercise I play with ideas that float on the edge of life and death.

After the Six Dar War the Israeli artist Egael Tomarkin created an assemblage of confiscated weapons that he welded together. At the first glance it seems to be a protest against the war but later it seemed to me to be a commemoration rather than a denunciation. The disused guns reminded us of the process of death and killing. These mangled weapons which were the rifles that killed my brothers-in-arms were painful to look at.

The spear, the hunting tool of our ancestors, is ominous, graceful, threatening, and beautiful. Its shape is fascinating, especially the way it tapers down to a point where something meets nothing. When making them in my studio I tried to defuse the spears of their potential danger, to abstract them down to form without purpose. I wanted to use the "kill" notion of them as a means of protest and a springboard for ideas. They have been frozen for good, their original purpose transcended as they become aesthetic objects.

>>>Click here for original Spear gallery.