Parables of Space: Lavi Daniel
December 2, 2006 – February 25, 2007
Lavi Daniel’s mid-career survey exhibition, Parables of Space, spans the years 1982 to 2006, highlighting his recent large-scale, gestural abstract oil paintings beginning in 2004. Including Daniel’s recent canvases, the show presents six distinct groups of work, revealing both the radical style shifts and the underlying consistency of a remarkable artistic evolution: Representational paintings with acute compositions of fragmentary imagery, 1982–1987; large, gestural abstract earth-toned oil paintings, 1990; lustrous oil paintings with geometric object/ground reversals that revive his interest in dream-like or meditative states, 1997–2000; and pastel paintings with the color intensities of his early figurative painting, 2002–2003. Throughout his painting career, Daniel has sought intense emotional responses that bring about “felt” experiences on the uneasy threshold of consciousness.  Anne Ayres, curator.