David Adika with 'Table Studies' at Casa Morandi in Bologna

On the occasion of ART CITY Bologna 2016, Casa Morandi inaugurates on January 27 at 5 p.m. a focus exhibition on David Adika, Israeli artist who, with his photographic works, pays homage to Giorgio Morandi.
The exhibition, entitled Table Studies, will be open to the public until March 20 and is the ideal opportunity to present the two works from the series As in Water Face Face Reflects that Adika donated to the Museo Morandi in 2015.
Adika's photographs are a by-product of the reality of his life. They deal with his personal biography, the collective memory of the society in which he lives, and tie political reality to social reality. In his photographic work, he wants to show the presence of beauty, for which he uses the strategies of seduction and capture. I am looking for photographic moment - a specific event of beauty realized in the mechanical photographic act that will fix it forever as a photograph”.
Photography as inquiry of beauty, as medium able to express seduction and sensuality also through common objects as a plastic bottle or a melon, able to transform ordinary in extraordinary and special in the attempt to instill “beauty in everything” - as he says - and leaving the value judgment to the viewer, or better the possibility that “aesthetics” is not just a matter of beauty, but also a function of the relationship between place, identity, image and gaze.
Adika, as many artists of all over the world, doesn't hide to find inspiration in Morandi's work, as synthesis of color, balance, sensibility and simplicity. So, the choice to exhibit a selection of ten of Adika' works in the house on Via Fondazza wants to be a further confirmation how much Morandi's art is field of research and inspiration source for so many young artists.
Actually, we could recognize that the Israelian artist has internalized the Morandian lesson as well according to a personal vision, through a careful study of composition and a deep survey of the relationship between idea and reality. Subverting the Bressonian theory of the “decisive moment”, as the great French photographer defines the unexpected instant and so worthy of
being photographed, Adika uses the photographic medium to overcome any temporal contingency and to express “mental and social matters”.
What makes his work really extraordinary is light, a very pure and original light, which almost seems to reject shadow. Although it departs from the pictorial nature of Morandi's light, it evokes it, writing (from photos graphia = writing with light) images that are always different from one other, in perfect harmony with Morandi's variants.
“I am totally driven by the light, and I am always in a trail, in an attempt to subdue the light”.
In Table Studies the little changes and the subtle variations of light and composition are preparatory to the construction of sense and significance.
In sequence, the works seem like frames of a film returning to each subject a particular significant and expressive value. They look like fragments of an action in motion, where the slight movement of the subject, or sometimes its disappearance, recreate a balanced framing, with an orchestral tension and a strong geometrical tension. Also where the artist playfully overturns the image, we should read his continuous attempt to undermine the existing order to suggest new relationships between identity, sight and sign, beyond prearranged classifications and divisions.

Biografia
David Adika was born in Jerusalem in 1970. He lives and works in Tel-Aviv-Yaffo. Adika graduated from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in 1997, receiving BFA. He received MFA in 2004, graduating from joint educational program of Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and Hebrew University Advanced Studies Program.
In the last 15 years he had solo exhibitions at The Latvian National Museum of Art in Riga, Tel Aviv Museum, Herzliya Museum of Art, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, The Open Lens Gallery, The Gershman Y, University of the Arts, Philadelphia among other institutions. His works have been included in group exhibitions at venues such as Ashdod Art Museum, The Shpilman Institute for
Photography in Tel Aviv, and Kristinehamns Konstmuseum in Sweden, among others.

LIST OF WORKS
David Adika
Table Studies, 2015
7 color photographs
Inkjet Archival Print
22.7 x 34 cm
David Adika
Table Studies, 2015
1 color photography
Inkjet Archival Print
32 x 48 cm
David Adika
Untitled (da As in Water Face Reflects Face), 2013
1 color photography
Inkjet Print
32 x 48 cm
David Adika
Untitled (from As in Water Face Reflects Face),
2013
1 color photography
Inkjet Print
48 x 32 cm

David Adika
Table Studies
curated by Alessia Masi
Promoted by: Istituzione Bologna Musei | Museo Morandi
Supported by: Ambasciata di Israele in Italia
In collaboration with: Braverman Gallery Tel Aviv
Casa Morandi (via Fondazza 36, Bologna)
January 28 – March 20, 2016

Opening hours of the exhibition
From February 6 to March 20, 2016: Saturaday and Sunday h 2.00 - 6.00 p.m.
Casa Morandi
via Fondazza, 36 – Bologna
Free admission.
General Information: www.mambo-bologna.org