The visual impression of traditional Hebrew texts from a page of Mishnah rooted in the learning of Jewish sources, is for Pinhas Golan like a childhood lanscape. The texts are visual sources that join the collective and personal memory of the Holocaust victims. The blocking of the gate to his house by the Hungarian gendarme, followed b seperation from his family, becomes a daily obsession, and takes on an ambivalent expression in the central motif of the collages and asemblages calles "the blocked gate". The retangle or square which in his work becomes concrete by means of various techniques (paper, sand, heavy lead bands) 'block' the approach to the backgrounds which are in most cases prints or enlarged photo-copies of texts from the Mishnah, which are actually replacements of real people locked forever behind the gate. "Blocked gates" block/reveal Mishnah and Talmud texts stand at both sides of two wooden boxes framing pieces of newsprint (p.9), which expressing the dynamism of everyday life with its changing relevance, can be replaced like pages from the calendar.

Judit Kriwisky
Exhibition's Curator