The Scrolls of Concealment and Discovery

 As one contemplates the continuous narrative unfolding from end to end in Alma Itzhaky's scrolls of concealment and revelation, it's hard to believe that these intricate works originated in a compact studio. The constraints didn't allow her to spread out the paper to its full length, prompting a meticulous process of discovery and creation—one section at a time. 

 

This act of revealing and concealing gives rise to a visual language marked by a seamless flow, subtly divided into chapters, verses, words, syllables, and letters. Itzhaky's spectacular panoramas envelop the viewer, reminiscent of Claude Monet's garden and water panoramas at Giverny for the oval spaces in l'Orangerie. This transformation in Itzhaky's work is profound, abandoning the thick thematic painting of everyday scenes in the south of the city. Scenes of divided apartment rooms, crowded streets, day and night, previously painted in a style reminiscent of implicit surrealism combining the monumentality of Diego Rivera with the dreaminess of Bruno Schulz's Central Europe, are left behind. Itzhaky brings the light of raw paper into her breathing paintings, transitioning to allegorical art rooted in the abstract—a departure from a specific place and time to the realms of her imagination and life's sediment.