By: Sophia Dekel Caspi

Shahar Sarig is an artist, writer and editor, and an MA graduate in Art in Haifa University (2004-2006). Sarig travels through fields of pencil, color and word as an explorer wishing to preserve in his memory environmental phenomena feeding his imagination and allowing him to simultaneously exist both in the world of here and now and in the skies of there and maybe.

The series of works purchased by the museum was taken from Sarig’s sketchbook from the years 2012-2013. It contains somewhat grotesque portraits related to exploring the represented image in its weak spots, such as facebook pages and low-budget films. The emphasis is not on the seen but on the multifaceted occurrence with its fuzzy boundaries, as well as the relationship between line and color, and what is lost between them.

Sketchbooks are an important and central layer in Sarig’s works and they are a part of his continuous creation beginning somewhere near the turn of the century (around 1999). Each sketchbook represents a time frame of about three months. The format allows the artist to test verbal and visual ideas and relations between colors. In retrospect, the sketchbook turns into a horizontal review of events, inspirations, real and fictional experiences, that affected his artistic work and are used as a kind of testimony of the creation process.