Ilana Dotan: Shelf Life

Ilana Dotan (b. 1967, Jerusalem) creates remarkable graphite and charcoal drawings characterized by simple compositions, photographic realism and perfect technical control. She portrays textures, materials and transparencies, capturing cheap, everyday objects in drawings that call to mind the still-life masterpieces of 17th-century artists. Yet despite her acquaintance with this historical genre, Dotan’s virtuosic compositions replace its traditional elements – expensive tableware, fruit, flowers, a card deck or an hourglass – with synthetic packaging materials: empty, used food containers such as Styrofoam trays, plastic bottles, aluminum foil, bubble wrap or cling film. The point of departure for her drawings is always photographs: Dotan captures the objects on her Smartphone, processes the images digitally, and then enlarges them – in some cases to the point of near-abstraction.

Dotan’s drawings come together to form a visual essay about the discarded materials used for packaging, storage and shipping. Their marginality (they are always supporting actors in the play) symbolizes a culture of accelerated, mindless consumption, in which everything is disposable. Although they are transparent and malleable, they do not disintegrate over time. Against the backdrop of ecological, cultural and artistic concerns, these materials represent a paradox that of disposable things that are incredibly durable. Such materials, which do not break down naturally, are responsible for the environmental destruction that endangers our lives. In her drawings, Dotan endows them with a human dimension: volume-filling bags that resemble air-filled lungs, open garbage bags recalling a gaping throat, a single latex glove resembling a caressing hand – which all seem to belong to a personal, bodily realm. Although they are absent, their “users” are always present.