Erez Uzan, an artist and art teacher, Lives in Kibbutz Merhavia with his wife and their two daughters. His work engages with reality, both physical and metaphorical. Over the years, he has primarily painted himself and his family. Countless self-portraits depict almost realistic situations, layered and from multiple points of view, offering perspectives that explore themes of masculinity, family, commitment, and rootedness.

    The term “Bein Hazmanim” (“between times”) is borrowed from the world of yeshivas, referring to the period between two study terms, when students are on break with their families. The exhibition began to take shape during 2024, through the backdrop of war, missile fire, and a persistent sense of threat. It evokes this in-between time that appears routine, in which attempts are made to establish and maintain a sense of normality.

  Uzan observes and then paints, often from imagination. Through imagery, he offers an interpretation of reality and of his own mental and emotional state. The exhibition features large-scale oil paintings together with smaller pastel works on paper. Oil painting is a slow, layered, material process. Uzan notes that working with pastels allows him to create more realistic images, enabling him to pour his thoughts onto the page with ease, particularly in this fragile and uncertain period that demands rapid shifts between states. The works depict everyday scenes unfolding around the home and the kibbutz - the garden, public spaces, the swimming pool and the surroundings of his home and studio. The kibbutz is presented as a closed and protected space, a kind of bubble that enables the continuity of routine, community, and family, even when the outside reality is turbulent and threatening. The swimming pool, which recurs throughout his work as a symbol of freedom and ease, also contains depth, tension, and fear, the moment before and after. A threatening human shadow on the pool floor, a body leaning on a railing with its face smeared in red paint, young girls playing in a pool near a playhouse with its door torn off, all emphasize the tension between an ostensibly innocent routine and a sense of waiting and the bizarre. In his paintings, Uzan repeatedly examines the idea of safe space - the shelter, the studio, and alongside them a patch of cacti in which his figure lies.

   In this complex period, when questions repeatedly arise regarding artistic practice and its necessity, Uzan stands with his compelling sense of humor, his cynicism, and his probing gaze. He echoes both personal and collective reality, managing to touch—sensitively and simply upon the exposed nerve we all share.