By: Sophia Dekel Caspi

Lior Shtainer, painter, entrepreneur and curator (owner of Gallery 121, 2010-2012), looks for signs of interaction in situations lacking communication with the immediate environment.

As part of her work as curator, Shtainer had a few surprising encounters with artists, professionals and the art-loving public. Her interpretation of these encounters is reflected in her paintings, through the disinterest they radiate, and the loneliness and forced friction they entail. Shtainer corresponds with modern art history and wishes to mediate her work to the viewers through raising popular subjects such as alienation, loneliness, and helplessness.

The work How to Explain to a Mask? refers directly to the monumental work of Joseph Beuys (1921-1986), one of the most important conceptual artists of the second half of the 20th century, and especially his monumental activity in the Schmela Gallery in Düsseldorf, How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965). As an artist and an activist, Beuys believed that art could and should make a difference, heal, and mend, i.e. “the Artist as Shaman”. As part of the action, Beuys sat behind a screen, honey and gold leaves spread on his face and a dead hare in his lap. This act referred to the gap between the visual image in modern art and the general public.

The manner in which Shtainer positions the figures in an urban environment is also reminiscent of the street painting of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938), a German artist who was one of the first expressionists who depicted lonely prostitutes, dancers and circus men in his painting, in the streets of Berlin, on the verge of WWII. When the Western world gave up on Tribe/Nation/State-centered perceptions, embracing a human-centered perception, did it lose its human aspect all together, its ability to listen to the Other?