Ron Geva
Art of the Heart
"Shades of Black"
2023, collection of works, Haifa University
A collection of works summarizing the second year of the Art Therapy degree at the University of Haifa.
If last year I dealt with the hope that blooms from the fracture and the light that enters through the cracks, this year I chose to go deeper into the darkness and find shades in it. As the eyes get used to the darkness, it is possible to distinguish between different shades of black and call them by name.
…"Maybe it's actually easier this way, to stop hoping. I curl up in despair and lay my head in the lap of the abiss. The darkness accepts me, uncoditionally. In the darkness I can smile without fear of being seen. There are many shades of black, I tell myself, definitely enough for a silhouette like me. I pull up the blanket and close my eyes. Do with me as you will."
Shades of darkness
Permanent markers on newsprint 50X70
I closed my eyes and saw: black vacuum. A dark world. Flickers of hope - stars twinkling through the clouds. White salt absorbs black ink. A beam of life emerges from a lighthouse far away in another world, unattainable. Dull eyes accustomed to the darkness, knowing by heart their winding path, always leading to the same place - to the beginning.
I enter my darkness, to try to get to know it, to get to know it, to see a face in it, to break it down into its components, to understand how it works and what it is for me. I tried to create it on the page. I built a substance of darkness, line after line. I gave each piece of darkness the attention it deserved. A darkness that I thought I would get lost in, but suddenly it turned into many types of darkness. When I try to watch it from the inside, I discover that it is deep and full and has hundreds of meanings, layers and functions. That it serves as protection from fear. That it is a hiding place, it envelopes, it paralyzes, it swallows you whole. I understand that only after you get to know it and all its shades, can the light begin to emerge from it.
Scratches
Wooden board, acrylic, engraving.
Internal scratches,
That no one sees
They're on the inside, so I don't see them nor feel them.
They are under the tongue, hiding in dark corners between the capillaries.
Only now, years later, I'm starting to feel the scars
They are rough and deep.
And I wonder
How they get into me
How they hurt me
How they become a network of arteries,
How they build me.
Dazzling life
Black sheet 50X70, acrylic paints
Overflow. I need help. I don't have the capacity to contain all these colors, I need someone to hold me. Life burst out of me from everywhere, oozing out of the darkness. A stone weight, a feather weight, a pool of colors, an ocean of life, a convergence of everything to a vanishing point that is me.
It does'nt show
Sock, cotton, sewing thread.
The girl in the mirror has
A transparent face staring at her from within,
Glossy eyes devoid of knowledge,
A smiling mouth sewn into large stiches,
A neck decorated with dirt veins
Dust anoited marbeled textured arms
Gray clusters of pollen under our fingernails,
Crisp white body shell
Without traces, without taste, without smell,
Gumball meat, flexible and untorn,
Stretched and bullied without a scar,
Ready to be used again,
Next time.
