Grand Gestures
Yael Grinwald
Curator: Yair Barack
Yael Greenwald's solo exhibition Grand Gestures spreads across two separate spaces, which seemingly operate as parallel axes. It soon becomes clear that there is a close connection between them. The physical distance between the spaces embodies the gap between body and spirit, between a moment and its continuation in time, and between the real and the metaphorical. Each space develops a different gesture—one intimate, contemplative, almost quotidian; the other is dramatic, physical, and unsettling. Together, they offer a pictorial and emotional journey that examines how a personal experience of vulnerability can become the visual language of healing.
In the vestibule, a series of paintings (Grand Gestures, Small Gestures) is displayed, which, at first glance, appear to be a kind of repetitive choreography of still life — a bouquet of flowers repeated over and over, almost obsessively. However, behind the formal repetition lies a biographical story: Greenwald paints the bouquet she has received after undergoing a major operation, accompanying its blooming and, above all, its wilting over the course of more than a year. Each painting documents a different stage in the bouquet's life, and hence also in her recovery. The flowers, ancient and even worn symbols of fleeting beauty, giving, and parting, become a measuring device of time, an emotional clock that documents the pace of change – of the body, mind, and memory. In this space, time is not linear but a cycle of decay and rebirth. The series echoes the European tradition of flower painting, but connects to one that highlights decay, transience, and the memory of death.
In the main room of the exhibition (Grand Gestures, Good Hand"), the pictorial language expands into other realms – larger, more fraught, and more complex. A series of large-scale paintings shifts between figurative and abstract styles, drawing inspiration from two primary images: an operating room scene and an image of the human brain. These serve as the basis for Greenwald's pictorial research – a kind of Study in the classical sense, where a theme is explored through variations. The dissected body, the exposed organs, the surgical instruments, the mending hands – all these are broken down into surfaces of color and stains, swirling into charged compositions that balance scientific precision with physical expressiveness. Alongside these, the image of the brain – the locus of thought, consciousness, and emotion – functions as an abstract space of lines, layers, and colorful networks. It is a field of consciousness caught in a struggle between pain and healing.
Together, the two series represent Greenwald's personal journey—from worry and fear to observation, from the exposed body to the pictorial language as a space of healing, and from the real to the symbolic. Greenwald uses painting not only to document but also to reclaim ownership of her body and life story. Through the slow, repetitive, precise act of painting, she redefines the concept of gesture—not as a dramatic or public one, but as a daily act of attention, presence, and self-compassion.
The exhibition Grand Gestures explores the fine line between vulnerability and strength, between pain and beauty. It invites the viewer to enter the body—not as an outside observer, but as a partner in an ongoing curative journey, in which painting becomes breath, memory, and the gesture itself.