Born in Romania, 1956. Lives and works in Tel Aviv

Untitled, 2007, mixed media

Philip Rantzer endows mundane objects with a strange, alienating quality by dissociating them from their familiar context and transposing them into unreal spaces. Rantzer’s early works were defined by the dichotomy between estrangement and belonging and by allusions to the process of immigration. His more recent works feature assemblages of miscellaneous objects, which bespeak a capacity for inventiveness and talent for improvisation similar to those employed by homeless people to create their transient homes. For Rantzer, found objects function as mediators between his personal, private memories and the memories experienced by the viewer. These mnemonic objects thus represent both what is present and what is absent or permanently vanished.