In his new exhibition, Vitality Field, Dan Dan Bashi presents a collection of oil and acrylic paintings created over the past few years in his studio on Ketura Kibbutz in the southern Arava. The works emerged from an ongoing dialogue with the geological landscape surrounding him –a living archive of a years-long history that inspires him to create. Bashi collects and examines rocks and fossils from his environment – remnants of an ancient existence – not as a researcher who analyses, maps, or seeks to make a stand, but as part of his search for the formation of matter and time, an image, form and essence.

Through continual attentiveness to his surroundings, and by forming a compilation of strata and actions, Bashi engages with the inner process of painting itself. Each work evolves over a prolonged period and through stratification: starting, pausing, editing, adding, erasing, exposing. His method of working echoes the process of fossilization: Once-living organic matter transforms into a mineral substance without losing its form – just as the artist translates impressions and memories into a material language while preserving their inner essence. The numerous layers and ongoing work reveal a range of processes that mirror the complex transformations matter undergoes as it turns into a fossil – a living entity transforms and becomes fixed within the landscape and environment, and no one can tell how it will eventually look, when it will be unearthed, and by whom.

Bashi is interested in the moment when matter is transformed – in the tension between fixation and change, between the present and history. He is drawn to the in-between, the place where geological processes encounter creative ones, one influencing the other. His process is not linear: it is often disrupted, split, reopened. The works themselves exist within this state of temporary stability; the painting often reflects a suspended state of mind, as if resisting the moment when it becomes “obedient,” hanging on the gallery walls. The layers that accumulate throughout the process – some visible, others only sensed – allow a shift between different interpretations, offering more than a single image.

The works preserve uncertainty as a creative principle of Bashi’s. Most of them do not

necessarily allude to a desert presence, nor do they convey the terrain surrounding the artist. Bashi leaves the works without a distinct indication of time and place: They seem at times to evoke a vague memory of a landscape, at others a fragment of a dream; a flash of psychedelic illusion or shifting consciousness. The abstract compositions also blur concrete questions of scale, whether close-up or distant, allowing the image to undergo further transformation, much like those that propel Bashi in his constant wandering. It is not always clear whether we are seeing something already eroded, something still coming into being, or something yearning to reemerge.

And perhaps this is what motivates Bashi: not to describe what was or imagine a narrative of what will be, but to capture the process of something that is about to be uncovered or about to disappear. In his work, the painting is not a final destination but a continual state where memory, matter and imagination fuse, leaving an open trace.

Like a rock slowly etched over time, his works unfold their story in layers – layers that are not always decipherable, nor necessarily meant to be. The geographical area in which he operates, seemingly still or bare at first glance, is full of complex, patient vitality, often hidden from view. Like this landscape, Bashi’s images are not captured in a single glance, thus allowing the viewer to accept his invitation to experience and dwell in the space of observation he offers.

Assaf Hinden, June 2025

English translation: Yael Klein

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Dan Dan Bashi

1994, Israel, Lives and works in Ketura.

Education

2022 Professional training program by the Edmond de Rothschild Foundation. 

2017–2021 Hamidrasha - Faculty of Arts, Beit Berl College. Awarded Excellence Scholarship upon graduation.

Solo Exhibitions

2024 "We Can Meet" Lobby Gallery, Eilot District. 

2024 "Invitation to Sit Down" Art Cube Artists' Studios, Jerusalem.

Group Exhibitions

2024 "Questions to God" UPSIDEDOWN Gallery, Los Angeles. 

2023 "Questions to God" Uriel 23 Gallery, Tel Aviv. 

2023 "Climate Changes" at the Ministry of Education offices.

Art Project  residency

2024 "Where to Now 2024" Eilot Region Community Center and Edmond de Rothschild Center.