The Alchemist's Basement

Janice Shapiro

May 4 - June 2 - 2007

Janice Shapiro, mixed media, 57cm x 45cm x 70cm

Art Gallery Twenty Four is delighted to host The Alchemist's Basement, Janice Shapiro's solo exhibition of fourteen three-dimensional, mixed media, meticulously made ensembles, shown for the first time.

Though related to the art of installations, and inspiring a sense of monumentality, Janice Shapiro's works invite us to approach them closely, allowing an intimate self-referential involvement and appreciation. Following the tradition of assemblage, and creating images in contrast to modern industrial high technology and contemporary society's mood and aesthetic, Shapiro brings found objects and materials to their highest level of expressive and associative qualities. Manipulating them with deep sensitivity and awareness of their symbolic and archetypal meaning, she builds miniature structures that result in enigmatic environments of strong psychological power, reminiscent of mechanical or experimental ancient workshops. We find ourselves inside spaces that remind us of laboratories of the medieval alchemists. The architectural premises, small details, intriguing objects and tools as well as material remnants seem to have been covered by the patina of time, suggesting a metaphorical journey through the history of the human scientific quest, technical experimentation and artistic creativity. This searching to uncover the unknowns of Nature, as seen in the images brought into being by Janice, evokes a parallel exploration of the mysteries of the human unconscious.

Found objects, broken toys and materials such as, wood, sand, stones, scraps of fabric and leather, fibres, glass fragments, metals, sponge, fur, bones, das, moulding paste, are joined together and transformed into suggestive textures and mysterious objects and instruments. These are used as tools, for work and research, by the dolls representing the figure of the petrified ancient alchemist, or the young, curious and busy girl who may place herself in different locations within her arcane surroundings.

The Alchemist's Basement, in its fourteen versions displayed in the gallery space, following its narrative of evolution, starts with the obscure chaotic massa confusa, and continues with the works in which all the elements are still connected by a black cover paint but the objects and spaces become more clearly defined. Here the architectural structure is composed of three levels, as in between down and up and red in black, until arriving at the open light environment of the workshop-house in ground works and inquiry. We are presented with carefully arranged images of environments that seem to evolve from death to life, from darkness to light, and from chaos to order and enlightenment.

Inspiring feelings both of horror and attraction, Janice Shapiro's alchemical basements awake in the beholder a wide range of multi sensory associations related to his own fantasies and fears and to both real and dreamlike experiences. These scenes of perverse beauty bring to mind Louise Nevelson's, Joseph Beuys's and Anselm Kiefer's mind-teasing interpretations of the basic materials and their expressive powers.

Janice Shapiro was born in Capetown, South Africa. She moved to Israel where she completed a Fine Arts degree with distinction, majoring in painting, at the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem. She studied Literature and Philosophy in the Hebrew University, and completed a Master's Degree in Art Therapy in Boston, Massachusetts.

Some years ago, her fingers began to itch in the direction of three dimensional materials that had never attracted her before. She became a fervent collector of every manner of " stuff" and began building with whatever she found, and whatever found her. Today much of her time is spent putting together works that come into being through combining the fragments she accumulates. The Jungian oriented approach to art therapy she developed, and her long term involvement in accompanying others on their healing journeys into the unknown areas within their souls, have a deep influence on her imagery and her way of working on her own art.