The entirety of Moshe Shek’s works – a difficult exhibition to decipher, reveals a handbreadth and covers a handbreadth. It is not an exhibition of the visible but an exhibition of the invisible – an exhibition of longing. Although it’s very busy with the material aspect, it is designed for the immaterial. Precisely because it is built from one of the heaviest materials – the burnt earth – it tries to encompass problems of the spirit. It tries to define life in the same way it tries to define art. It tries to define the “place” and the “person of the place” in the same way it tries to define the “art of the place” and the “artist of the place”.
Moshe works with two types of matierlas – ceramic material and slip paint. Both of these are content unto themselves, from their archaic historical perspective as well as from their Israeli perspective. They conduct sensitivities of “earth art” in general with archaeological memories of thousands of years of ceramic work in Israel devoid of romantic quotes. The color of the slip is directly associated with ancient Egyptian paintings as well as with the Philistine culture in Israel and also with the pre-Columbian culture in America, and with tree bark paintings in Australia and other folk cultures. The children collaborated with Moshe and they painted some of the slip decorations. Thus, the first element – design of the clay statues lacking in a clear figurative definition, speaks of a longing for primitive archetypal forms that capture images of animals, images of birds and images of primitive vessels. With the distinct lack of a figurative definition Shek emphasizes the archetypal of the formative synthesis. These forms, lacking a concrete identity, were created with an awe-inspiring rhythmic technical quality – all of this imparts a sense of an obligatory distance.
The sources of influence and historical context of Moshe’s various works are in essence from the influential sources in our places – at least for those that claim to engage in “sculpture” and not in “ceramics”.
He finds a direct connection to the core of the wisdom of ancient civilizations – pursued by the spirit of Rudi Lehmann and Brâncuși. He flirts with the forms of the archaeological works of Israel, and in particular with the burial chambers of the Chalcolithic period. He confronts the Anatolian findings – where he visited – like with the Natufian culture at the Golan Gate, with the Pessah Bar-Adon findings in the Judean Desert caves as well as his direct experiences in the Beit Nir and Beit Guvrin caves or his infringing encounter with the forms of an Arab vineyard complex that he discovered on the slopes of Mount Hebron, or his direct contact with objects used in the traditions of local cultures for many generations – tools, grain storage containers, food preparation tools and agricultural tools.
In fact, Moshe Shek’s longing is the the deep and direct continuation of Danziger’s longing to define the experience of the “place” in all dimensions (it is interesting to compare, for example, Danziger’s “sheep” to Moshe’s “animals”). In contrast to Danziger, who in his last years found immense satisfaction in discovering Eastern reality as an “artistic situation” – a scared tree, a water canal, vessels, a tomb – Moshe designed his “Nimrod” using sensory, patient and epic work, as one who is tyring to understand the “rhythms of the place” through a direct experiential experience, like that Greek writer who only succeeded to understand Zorba’s personality through the common active dance. Moshe’s belief in the inherent message of “doing the right thing” – whether in shape or in material and in tools (an approach of origin that coincides with the foundation of his teacher, Rudi Lehmane’s, theory) gives the heavy technique of processing the “thick” ceramic material the ability to carry the “thin” abstract message.
And deep down – the message of Israeli art beyond the coincidental tremors of time – beyond the here and now, beyond the existential concreteity and the changing and borrowed artistic fashions from “there”.
In general, Moshe tries to connect “art” and “life” in their deep and existential breath, beyond the individual and in a dialogue with timeless art and with archetypal life. For fifty years Moshe has developed his approach to material, to shape and to the problems of artistic identity. His path as a sculptor has, in the past, crossed materials such as iron, concrete and wood. Now it seems that only the “burnt earth” gives him a “felling of being home”, a true feeling of the “experience of the Land of Israel” in terms of the incessant longing.