Rotem Reshef () is an Israeli-American abstract painter and site-specific installation artist known for her process-based action painting technique and large-scale works, characterized by vivid and exuberant compositions. She works and lives in Tel Aviv and New York.Rotem Reshef. Information Center for Israeli Art. Israel Museum. She presented solo museum exhibitions at the Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, New York, the Bakersfield Museum of Art in Bakersfield, California and at the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History in Tel Aviv.
Biography Rotem Reshef was born in Rehovot, Israel. Her maternal grandfather is the Zionist leader Moshe Smilansky.Prof. Avraham Balaban (July 10, 2018). Tel Aviv reflections: Want of Matter opposition. Haaretz. Her parents are Yehezkel (Hezi) Avivi, honorary citizen of Rehovot(May 9, 2023). Hezi Avivi, honorary citizen of Rehovot. My Rehovot. and Tsila Avivi. She has two siblings; her brother is the film producer Gidi Avivi.Avivi Yehezkel Hezi, family tree. Digital Families Album. Genealogy Center in the name of Sir Arthur Gilbert, Rishon LeZion Museum. She attended and graduated from the HaMidrasha – Faculty of the Arts, Ramat HaSharon (1985–1988). During her studies, she was the recipient of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation (AICF) Sharett Prize for Young Artists. She took part in a group exhibition of the awarded artists at the Ramat Gan Museum of Israeli ArtYonatan H. Mishal (December 22, 2019). Learning to Paint All Over Again. Erev Rav. She received her Master's in Museology from Reinwardt Academie, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2002–2004).
Her paintings covered two of the winery's bottle labels.Rotem Reshef. Winner at 4th edition. Tenuta S. Anna, Venice, Italy. Her work, “Deep”, was awarded an honorable mention in the London International Creative Competition (LICC) in 2014.Deep by Rotem Reshef, honourable mention in painting. London International Creative Competition (LICC). She participated as an artist-in-residence at the following institutes: in 2015 at the School of Visual ArtsJames Kipton Cronkite (August 21, 2018). NY & Tel-Aviv Based Painter, Rotem Reshef. in New York City, in 2021 at Residency UnlimitedRotem Reshef. RU (Residency Unlimited) Residency. and in 2022 at The New York Art Residency and Studios (NARS) Foundation, both in Brooklyn, New York.Rotem Reshef (Israel). NARS Foundation.
Murals by her are on permanent display in Detroit, MichiganAshley Zlatopolsky (June 8, 2023). Midtown Mural. The Jewish News (Detroit). and in Zaritsky Artists’ House in Tel Aviv.About. The Artists’ House in Tel Aviv.
Personal life Rotem Reshef is married to Shai Reshef, the founder and president of the University of the People. She has four grown-up children.Julie Wiener (January 8, 2013). An Israeli ‘Citizen Of The World’. Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Artistic tradition and practice In an article about Reshef in Haaretz, Prof. Avraham Balaban characterized her as a student of Raffi Lavie from the Want of Matter art school, who took the opposite path and followed Ofakim Hadashim school of Joseph Zaritsky, an Abstract Artist, painted in a vivid abundance colors. Her style brings to mind Action Painting or Process Art, which works in two and three-dimensional forms in sculptural painting installations. Her work is based on the tradition of Jackson Pollock, following the footsteps of Katharina Grosse’s site-specific installations and Sam Gilliam’s large-scale indoor/outdoor works.Sagi Refael (2016). Control l Release exhibition catalogue, pp. 7-11. Reshef's installations are site-specific and relate to the surroundings of the exhibition space. She used to collect foliage and place them on a scroll, according to her scheme.Rachel McCullah Wainwright, Bakersfield Museum of Art curator (2023). Vista exhibition catalogue. The Curator and art critic, Peter Frank wrote: “In her painting installations, Reshef looks for circumstances, historical and contemporary. And in those circumstances, she identifies social and economic factors... Reshef alludes to discrete but simultaneous conditions and standpoints, not to judge them so much as to share them with us so as to prompt our own investigation. Reshef provides the metaphors, we pursue the comprehensions... She seeks... to... translating a social and scientific discourse into aesthetic sensation.”Peter Frank. The Bright Side, Gallery RAM, Bakersfield, California catalogue.
Bodies of work and exhibitions In earlier works, starting in 2010, Reshef used a painting technique in diluted acrylic paint and intuitive work without brushes. For her first installation exhibition in Art Space TLV in 2016, Sagi Refael, the exhibition's curator, named it "Control | Release," a method of painting described her creation style ever since. It comprised 44 meters (142 feet) of painting scrolls hung from the ceiling to the floor and surrounding the gallery. In 2017, Reshef installed her wide-ranging composition “Time Traveler” in a solo exhibition at the Tall Wall Space in the University of La Verne, California. Photographer and videographer Eric Minh Swenson documented the formation of that composition on-site. "Time Traveler" was created with six scrolls of paintings interwoven horizontally and vertically into a color-blended big grid. Symbolizing the passage of time, the four seasons interlaced to create a cohesive tapestry in the entire installation.Jacqueline Bell Johnson (December 14, 2017). Time Traveler – Rotem Reshef. Art and Cake. The canvases were rendered with diverse techniques, colors, and ambiance, reflecting our period and inundated by images from all directions. The six scroll paintings are blended in a clash of simultaneous climates, denoting the climate change phenomenon as rain and storms in the summer and heat waves in the winter.Sagi Refael (2017). Time Traveler. Exhibition catalogue. “Time Traveler” was in a new contour at the Kwan Fong Art Gallery at California Lutheran University, renamed “Time Traveler: Part ll - Compass”, as a more political expansion of the original artwork. By "Compass", Reshef offers the viewers inner introspection in an era of visionless leaders who cannot navigate their countries and communities onto havens. The artwork rendered a sanctuary of silent observation and vast interpretations to the viewers, suggesting that they follow their path and inner passions and not necessarily the objectives politicians acquaint them.(2018) Time Traveler Part II – Compass exhibition catalogue.
In the summer of 2018, Reshef presented two new bodies of work: the outdoor installation “Intervals” on the facade of the Zaritsky Artists’ House in Tel Aviv and “Spectrum” at the Soho House in West Hollywood, California. “Spectrum” manifested Reshef's interest in the process of art making and in different ways to depict the elusive nature of the passing time and the fleeting seasons. The 22 paintings in this series presented monochromatic stages inspired by the different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, accentuating the existing yet invisible rays of light. The ultraviolet radiation waves are on the shorter end of the spectrum, while the infrared wave of light is on the longer end. These ends also mark the shifting tonalities and full range of hues between warm colors of reds and yellows to cold colors of blues and purples, sensualizing a change of moods and atmospheres, from somber to cheerful, from coolness to passion.Nicole Behnam and James Kipton Cronkite (July 22, 2018). Rotem Reshef on her New Art Series: ‘Spectrum’. The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. Between 2018 and 2024, Reshef exhibited four site-specific outdoor murals on the facade of the Zaritsky Artists׳ House in Tel Aviv. The first mural, "Intervals" (2018), presented an optical illusion with twenty faux "windows" revealing bold, abstract monochromatic paintings. Embodying tonal transitions from warm to cool colors, these works illuminated an atmosphere scale in passing the seasons through the shades, temperatures, and emotional qualities affected by shortening and lengthening cycles of hours and days during the year. Reshef's second mural project at the Artists’ House, “Eden in Two Acts” (2019), was split into two parts and responded to the second round of the Israeli legislative election in September 2019.Eden in Two Acts - Part I: Rotem Reshef. Artist House, Tel Aviv. In 2020, Reshef presented the painting installation: "A Heartfelt Event" in The Lab, Tel Aviv. The work was accompanied by a sound composition based on a voice recording from the protests against Benjamin Netanyahu that Reshef collected near the Prime Minister's Residence on Balfour Street in Jerusalem in the summer of 2020.Sharon Toval (2020). Rotem Reshef: A Heartfelt Event. Heartfelt Event catalogue, The Lab, Pp. 34-36. In October 2022, she staged her third mural, "Encore: At the Rate of a Heartbeat," on Tel Aviv's Artists House façade, a few weeks before the third round of the Israeli legislative election in November 2022. Alongside Reshef's immersive painting installations, she continued developing her "imprinting" paintings, which resulted in her "Ghost Libraries" and "Fossil" series of 2017–2018 and "Habitat" of 2019.(August 15, 2022). Rotem Reshef: Ghost Images. Tussle Magazine.
In October 2019, Reshef presented her solo exhibition "Arcadia," a painting installation at the Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, New York. She was referring to Nicolas Poussin's painting Et in Arcadia ego. The installation deals with the tension between the picturesque landscape and environment of the museum's natural surroundings, the potential of turmoil, and the suspended belligerence below the surface, both in American and Israeli societies.Michele Wije, Katonah Museum of Art curator (2019). An interview with Rotem Reshef. Rotem Reshef ARCADIA catalogue. Katonah Museum of Art.
In June 2022, Reshef presented the installation "Passage" at the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History, Tel Aviv. The installation aimed to elevate the awareness of human impact on the environment and encourage nature conservation. To create "Passage," Reshef used trimmings from Tel Aviv's parks and the Tel Aviv University's botanical garden near the museum. She alludes to the museum's laboratories and depicts its libraries."Passage" by Rotem Reshef. Steinhardt Museum of Natural History. In October 2022, she presented “Terra Incognita”, her first ceramic installation, as part of a group exhibition at the Center for the Arts at Towson University, which was chosen as one of the ten best Baltimore exhibitions by BmoreArt magazine.BmoreArt Team (December 30, 2022). BmoreArt's Ten Best Baltimore Exhibits of 2022. BmoreArt. Art critic Fanni Somogyi wrote: “As I look at it, I yearn for the smell of wet grass and freshly dug up earth... I'm drawn to the way this sculpture holds memory for both the artist and the viewer.”Fanni Somogyi (October 5, 2022). Excess and Access: Contemporary Ceramics at Towson University. BmoreArt.
In 2023, Reshef presented her site-specific installation "Vista" at the Bakersfield Museum of Art, Bakersfield, California. She was fascinated by the Panorama Vista Preserve, Bakersfield, and how it merges with Kern River Oil Field. She amassed permitted native foliage (trees, shrubs, and flowers) and then imprinted parts on the canvases.Stefani Dias (January 25, 2023). A scenic 'Vista' unfolds at BMoA. The Bakersfield Californian. Curator Peter Frank wrote: “With “Vista,” Rotem Reshef portrays Bakersfield – from the inside out. Reshef does not simply look at the city, she re-embodies its salience. “Vista” brings forth the inner dynamic of a municipality that encompasses and embraces both nature and industry, a town in which extractive commerce is integral to the ecosphere. Reshef does not judge this reality, but recapitulates it, presenting – re-presenting... she seeks... to... translating a social and scientific discourse into aesthetic sensation".