| God Abounding in Mercy
Erez Israeli
This work is both imbued with the atmosphere of a pieta scene and infused with a local
significance related to the death of soldiers and to notions of sacrifice and war. A mother
tries to hold on to her dead son as he keeps slipping from her arms in a never-ending loop,
while the prayer “God Abounding in Mercy” is heard in the background. This Jewish prayer
for the transcendence of the souls of the deceased is played at an extremely slow pace,
which causes the words to loose both their form and meaning. The image of the mother
attempting to hold up the body of her dead son alludes to Michelangelo’s Pieta sculpture
at the Vatican. In Michelangelo’s masterpiece, Mary supports her dead son with a single
arm; this nearly impossible position requires great strength that is incompatible with her
gentle and fragile appearance, thus making apparent that she has been endowed with
powers that exceed her physical abilities. Although the same kind of superhuman power
is expected of the mother in Erez Israeli’s video work, she is unable to perform the same
feat. Her son slips out of her arms again and again while the video documents her failed
attempts to hold on to him. The human mother, the mother of flesh and blood, is unable to
supersede her physical limits, and is unwilling to let go of her dead son.
In Michelangelo’s sculpture, the mother does not hold on to the son who is lying in her lap, and who is about to be taken from her. Her total acceptance of his death is based on the knowledge that he is soon to be resurrected. In Israeli’s work, by contrast, the mother – who knows she will never again see her son – continues to hang on to him. Unable to let him go, she tries to postpone his death – an attempt reiterated by the structure of the cinematic loop. The video was shot on the threshold between interior and exterior, between the private and public spheres. The window, which creates a cross-like shape projected at random onto the wall of a typical kibbutz home, provides the viewer with a from escape from the monotonous action; it also offers a view of an abstract exterior, in which the blue stain becomes part of a meaningless painterly stain that appears like part of the composition. At another moment, a car passing in the background alludes to the reality of the outside world, and disturbs the dramatic scene taking place inside: the external intervention violates the intimate and sacred moment. 
Erez Israeli lives and works in Tel Aviv. He is a graduate of the Mizpe Ramon Art School (1993), Hamidrasha
School of Art at Beit Berl College, and the postgraduate program of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design.
His work has been included in exhibitions at numerous museums and galleries, including “Mini Israel” (The
Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 2006); Ros La Vi (the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2004); “Mixed Emotions” (the
Haifa Museum of Art, 2006); the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, 2003; “Time Depot” (the Petach
Tikva Museum of Art, 2004); and the “Die Hebraer” (Martin-Gropius Bau museum, Berlin, 2005).He has won
several scholarships and prizes: the Sharet Fund Scholarship (2003,2005), Scholarship for excellence,
Beit Berl College of Art (2002, 2003), The Rich Foundation Award For Education, Culture & Welfare (2005),
Isracard & Tel Aviv Museum of Art prize for an Israeli artist (2005), Klachkin award (2006).
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