Ben Zion Avivi’s sculptures express a longing for the irreplaceable, things and moments that have been lost forever, whether to the artist personally, or to the world and people in general. Missed moments and points in time pass second by second. Lost opportunities can never be retrieved; pleasurable moments and happy memories can never be relived; damage is done that can never be repaired. Yet in Avivi’s sculpture, time does not pass by and disappear, instead it builds layer upon layer, and along with the irrevocable passage of time is the burden and weight of what has passed. An important element of the passage of time in Avivi’s sculptures are the cuts and tears in the metal. They are symbols of wounds, physical or spiritual, and destruction that has occured and which can never be undone or completely healed. They remain with us forever.

“Avivi is a self taught artist a ‘Le Douanier’ of Minimalism. He is a sculptor of iron who makes flat iron assemblages, that look like paintings but are not.

The foundations of art operate on a multitude of human functions: an intuitive order, an analytic or inductive order, conformist, comparative, consecutive or scrambled order. Each of these volitions are either disruptive or building activities.

Tinguely made self-destructive machines that were built of animated junk which worked themselves up to a frenzy and explosion. If Tinguely made an aesthetic of ‘malfunction’ in kinetic art, Avivi makes an aesthetic of ‘malfunction’ in Minimalist art.

Minimalist art is a kind of pictorial autobiography of the art work itself that records, questions and plays off the story of its own making. In Avivi’s case, it is not the process of its ‘becoming’ that is marked but the progress of the hard core work that is clocked.

Consequently, the artist here is an instrument, a conduit, of the art event.”

by Joshua Neustein - Contemporary Visual Artist, New York, NY

Bio

Ben Zion Avivi was born and raised in Jerusalem, Israel. Sculpting since a young child, he is a self taught artist, who learned his art from life and nature. He established himself as a sculptor in Israel before moving to Manhattan in the eighties. In 2006 he moved to Santa Fe. 

Avivi works in all different kinds of mediums; his use of material is not always obvious. He chooses materials that can express his ideas, execute his concept, reach his purpose.

In Avivi’s work, metal is no longer an inanimate substance, but becomes an organic material which he bends, cuts, twists, burns, weaves, pours and melts. Metal becomes a living element, dynamic and fluid, able to express and encompass a wide range of ideas and emotions. Complimenting this use of metal is his personal color language which he creates with patinas and chemicals to evoke emotion and to represent ideas such as destruction, nature, pain, discord, harmony.

Avivi sees potential in the obscure. Back in the 90’s, he had a couple of rolls of steel wool left over after polishing the wood floor of his Little Italy studio in New York City. He began to experiment. This experimentation took on a dialogue that evolved into his cohesive series of work  “Still Wool”. Avivi’s ideas are never static, the material always speaks to him, always argues with him; it is always a struggle. 

“How we look at things changes over time. I am interested in what will happen next- the surprises, the accidents.”