Judges’ reasoning:
Already at an early stage of her work, in the second half of the 80s, Eti Jacobi’s paintings demonstrated a new sensibility. Innocence, purity and childishness are present in her paintings in a manner which is completely different to their previously known manifestations. In the past, these concepts were related with “Modernism” and in that respect with “masculinity”, but in Eti Jacobi’s painting – executed as a fast, professional, acrobatic imitation, a sort of a magic show of classic European painting – the innocence, purity and childishness were to emerge from other places. The eroticism and ethics emanating from her paintings are also “different” to the Modernist ones. In her works there is a combination of fairytale mentality and virtuosity of execution. Jacobi borrows verses and sentences from the illustrations of Walt Disney industries, flinging them at and on the history of classic western art. In her early painting the figure of Tinkerbelle, the fairy from “Peter Pan”, floated in scenes copied of classic painters, while in Jacobi’s later painting – which is pure re-execution, a particular type of appropriation of classic paintings, oftentimes of mythological content – the animator spirit imbues the paintings. The swift motion typical to animation is what bestows her paintings with the quality of a miraculous appearance flickering in reality, turning them into a series of magic moments.

Courtesy of the artist and Noga gallery, Tel-Aviv

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