Quartz Studio is pleased to present Unearth, the first solo show in Italy by artist Lihi Turjeman (Tel-Aviv, Israel, 1985), curated by Noam Segal. With a new body of work focused on the connections between ancient and contemporary culture, Turjeman reimagines our relationship to contemporary notions of time, archeology, restoration and historical artifacts.

For the site-specific exhibition at Quartz Studio, Turjeman will create a painting installation defined by a lust for the archaic, a desire that signals a crisis attitude toward the culture of the present. Turjeman started this body of work with a series of small pseudo-scientific paintings, titled We Are Dealing With Very Dangerous Materials (2020), which depicts gloved hands and amorphous shapes made with sand, that encourage a scrutinizing gaze. A scientific, classifying way of looking at the world is activated by the work, as though further data, hidden within the pieces, remains to be unearthed.

Earthen Pots (2020) and Holding Pattern (2020) depict a multitude of empty clay amphorae gathered together over a black backdrop that is typically identified with archaeological research and laboratory work. Some of the pots are boldly painted, separated starkly against the canvas, while others are darker, obscured, or else yet to be drawn. The pots, arranged in a way that recalls choreographed human bodies, hint at the possibilities of another kind of gaze, one that leaps out and away from our binary understandings of science, truth formation, and of still life.