Artqol

Ronen Raz is an artist living and working in Israel. Through his sculptures, Raz merges principles of garment making with identity, connecting the natural environment and wildlife to the deepest core of human emotions.

Raz received an Honorable Mention in the 16th
International Sculpture Triennial in Poznan, Poland and 1st Prize at the 31st Tallahassee International, Florida State Museum. In the winter of 2017, he
participated in the MacDowell Colony residency program in New Hampshire, USA. Solo exhibitions of his work include Silver Pharm (2015) at Zemack
Contemporary Art Gallery, Tel Aviv and Works (2010) at The Hayek Center for Contemporary Art, Jaffa. 

Artist Statement:

Body and structure fascinate me. During the years when I designed clothes, I realized that engineering the fashioned body does not provide a response to the ideas and organic intimacy aspects that I was interested in. I have forever been fascinated with preservation and taxonomy and in my early days, I practiced taxidermy and maintained insect’s collection. Years later, I could define this as an “animate-inanimate” enterprise, an attempt to say something about the very skin we inhabit.

Today I mostly deal with leather and hair, as representations of my interest in the gap between their organic, living essence, and their current dead state, as it applies to broader human
questions regarding the place of mortality within our relationships and lives.
 

My works are comprised of life-size leather shell reproductions of trivial objects. I usually use remnants of damaged stocks of leather or recycled
leather goods. The pieces are painstakingly cut and sewn based on a model, and rest upon traditional work disciplines related to the creation of “haute couture.”

Everyday consumer products (car parts, road parts, supermarket carts, flush pipes and more) undergo surgical and chemical manipulations as they come to life with biological tissue and evoke associations towards an organic body, which, though exhibiting signs of sexuality and sensuality, remains compressed, drained, exhausted, and primarily human.