Odds or 06.08.25 - 27.08.25

Judith Anis and Sasha Okun

Koresh 14 gallery, Jerusalem
Curator: Yael Brandt
 

“The best way to learn is to teach your fellow”

Sasha Okun, An Affair with a Pencil: Footnotes to Drawing

 

The connection between the artist and teacher Sasha Okun and the painter Judith Anis began 28 years ago when Anis sat the entrance exams for art studies. Ever since, the two have been engaged in an ongoing creative and professional dialogue founded on a profound and meaningful comradely relationship, with Anis continuing to visit Okun’s studio for drawing and painting lessons. Both Okun and Anis routinely work on series of works, out of a belief that every subject is endless. Each of them has their own unique and cohesive voice, characterized by bold experiments in material and texture: Okun combines pastels and graphite while Anis blends acrylic and ink.

           

The bond that exists between the two artists resembles that of a couple – whether against the background of their interpersonal teacher-student relationship, or in the internal relation that exists between the subjects of their painting. The works in this exhibition flit between the two edges of consciousness – the figurative and the abstract. In Okun’s series, the relations are examined via the different values between individuals – or between nature and people, and the center of gravity between them. In Anis’s still nature series, the objects undergo abstraction into spots and lines that imprint the memory of the familiar onto the cork and the paper. Whereas Okun is a virtuoso of “the uncanny”, overseeing the unmediated encounter with finite corporeality, Anis has a wondrous ability to loosen her grip of the substantive image. These two poles, originating in the body and the spirit – are woven together in the exhibition, offering reciprocal inspiration in the search for new interpretation.                 

 

Special thanks to Vered Haddad, Dveer Shaked, Topaz Guez and Eli Ben Arye