Meditations
Indeed, while his aquarelle paintings represented Nature, depicting landscapes and villages, the aluminium works are not anchored in the real world. And if in the aquarelle paintings Serfaty was interested in borders between inaccessible territories, here the focus is on different kind of borders: between colors and shapes. The dynamics of Nature forces that oppose and fuse into each other is now replaced by a meditative stillness of abstract geometrical forms.
In his aluminium paintings, Serfaty creates a rigid grid that orchestrates the various components of the painting. By doing so, Serfaty puts himself again in the position of the conductor, who regulates and dictates order.
He decides where one component starts and where it ends. However, the grid has a more essential role in his work. “The grid is not just a layout or an underlying design” he clarifies, “it is an inherent part of the work, and in this series, it is actually present in the work. I folded the aluminium plate and unfolded it in a process that requires physical strength. I could actually feel how the grid becomes part of the painting.” Indeed, the traces of this process cannot be ignored.
Serfaty almost sculpts the grid, making his painting into a three dimensional work. As a result, the painting “invades” the real world and “participates” in it: it is affected by light and responds according to the direction of light and the way it
changes throughout the day.
While in his aquarelle paintings Serfaty was observing the alternation of light throughout the day and was trying to depict its impact in his paintings, here his initial interest in light allows him to take a step forward. By making his paintings three dimensional, Serfaty seemingly installs the mechanism of light alteration in it. The three dimensional painting is now subject to an outer source of light, and is forced to change its colors as the day goes by.
Blue, Yellow, Green. The colors are carefully laid next to each other on this
large aluminium plate. Pure and complex; radiant and at the same time deep and mysterious; three entities that are floating in space: approaching, touching, almost interacting, yet remain separated, maintaining their own identity.
