Born in Detroit, capital of the American car industry, Slabosky grew up during the heyday of Minimalism and the birth of Conceptual Art. In his youth, he was captivated by popular music – especially that of African-American gospel, rock-‘n-roll, etc. He studied literature and ancient Greek, and subsequently art, in Manhattan and Brooklyn, where he met Nomi Bruckmann, a young Israeli artist who would become his life partner. He immigrated to Israel in 1978, and settled in Jerusalem, where the dual presence of his past “over there” versus his existence “here” made him more acutely aware of the significance of his Jewish identity. In time, this duality became apparent in his work as an artist. Slabosky would harbor “his” Detroit in his heart throughout his life, and express his nostalgia for it through various explicit and implicit references in his art – and also directly, as a musician thoroughly imbued with the “then and there.”

In truth, Slabosky was drawn to music for as long as he had known himself. However, two cruel operations on his body dashed any hopes and illusions he may have had, one leaving him without one arm and shoulder, the other without one of his vocal chords. Even so, he later managed to develop something of a career as a gospel singer – especially as part of the Same World Trio which he established with two fellow artist-musicians, Avi Sabah (whose works are also currently on display at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art) and Gabi Kricheli.

The exhibition seeks to present, in broad strokes, Slabosky’s three areas of work in the years following the large survey exhibition of his work (the only one of that scope in his life) at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 1997 (curated by Moshe Ninio). In the twenty or so years from that time until his death, his painting gradually evolved: the irregular geometry of the surface became more freeform, and that in turn became a volumetric form – an abstract structure containing an internal space, prompting the question of whether this is sculpted painting, or painted sculpture.

But the most interesting transformations that began to emerge in Slabosky’s work concern the principal methods that he developed in producing it. Here is their gist: The first method was the use of only the paints available to him on his palette, and their distribution with a brushstroke (or “gesture,” as he called it) on the surface in front of him, and occasionally on more than one surface. A second method was to move the brush on the surface in predetermined structures, and at times at a predetermined rate, as well (e.g., one band of color a day). Another method – this time at the conceptual level – lay in his notion that the significance of the work derived from the principle of beginning and working toward an estimated completion, which was usually determined not by signature or a date, but by the time at which the work was removed from the studio. Another habit of the artist which might be conceivably regarded as a method was to gather abandoned items as he roamed about – from broken bits of furniture to dried flowers – and bring them back to his studio for potential use in his work.

Finally, it is worth noting that Slabosky’s volumetric work and the hidden space within were created by joining together various objects into a tight scaffold. This scaffold fills the space with a sculptural structure, while inviting the artist to address not only the front of the work but also its back, in a bid to shape its topography and prepare it as the groundwork for a painting – which from that point onwards would be irretrievably liberated from its dependence on a uniform surface.

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