Artist Sharon Poliakine’s new exhibit at Gordon Gallery, entitled Between Two Temples, explores the duality of the word “temple.”
Poliakine lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel. In 1989, she graduated from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and currently is a professor at Haifa University. Her works include paintings, objects, site-specific installations, and prints. For many years, Poliakine worked as a master printer at the Jerusalem Print Workshop and is a renowned expert in the art of etching. She believes that her past in printmaking has helped her as an artist today. She describes it as a risk, never knowing what will come out.
Sharon Poliakine’s Judeah Hills, 2024, oil on canvas.
The word “temple” is first defined as (1) a sacred place used for the worship of a god or gods. Temple Mount in Jerusalem is the holiest site, it was the location of the First and Second Temples which were the center of worship and national identity. According to Jewish tradition, the two temples were destroyed. The Neo-Babylonian Empire destroyed the First Temple due to idolatry, incest, and bloodshed among the people of Israel. The Romans destroyed the Second Temple due to unjustified hatred. Following the destruction of the two Temples, Temple Mount ceased to be a spiritual and political center for the people of Israel. This history of political instability and uncertainty gains a renewed resonance today. In a world that is increasingly chaotic and devoid of trust and truth, people may turn to spirituality and ritual either in one’s self or through art.
Temple is also defined as (2) the flat area on each side of your head. Poliakine practices meditation, where one is guided to place their awareness between the two temples to focus away from the outside world and find peace within one’s self, creating one’s own temple. Poliakine used the compact nature of Gordon Gallery to create a temple of itself, each wall being its own temple.
Poliakine loves working big. She says it is very physical; feeling as though she, herself, is in the painting and vice versa. It is a great challenge to keep the intensity of her work on a smaller canvas. Poliakine’s works build over time, created in cycles of markings and erasures, creation and destruction much like the intricate reality of Temple Mount.
Between Two Temples is full of unstable paintings, palpitating between two or more states. She focuses on the in-between. Not only between the two meanings of the word temple but between colors, textures, and battles; between a painter and a human being. Through layers of oil paint, she embodies the uncertainty of our times marked by destruction. Each layer holds a history, merging into one another to create the illusion of time passing through the scarred, textured surfaces and motifs hidden under each intricate layer of paint.
Sharon Poliakine’s new exhibition, Between Two Temples, is now open through October 10th at Gordon Gallery’s downtown NYC location, at 139 Norfolk Street, in the Lower East Side.