Gaston Zvi Ickowicz


Gastón Zvi Ickowicz is an Israeli visual artist living and working in Tel Aviv.

Biography

Gaston Ickowicz immigrated to Israel from Argentina in 1980 at the age of 6. He studied photography at Naggar School of Photography, Media, New Music, Visual Communication and Phototherapy in Musrara, Jerusalem from 1997 till 2000. Ickowicz received MFA in art and photography from Bezalel School of Arts and Design in 2008. Ickowicz works are in permanent collections of Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Haifa Museum of Art, Museum on the Seam in Jerusalem, Ashdod Art Museum and private collections.

Work

Ickowicz mainly works in video and photography and centers on the interaction between people and landscape in a socio-political context. His work entertains a dialogue with the Israeli sphere and touches some of the conflicts it contains.
The difference between "landscape" and "place" is one of Ickowics's main subjects.
His work examines the relations between these two concepts, as well as their potential to change following their definition as such and the perspective from which they are viewed.
He is interested in how the photographic act can transform a landscape, which may only be examined as a static image, into a place with a dynamic quality, an act that enables him to study various components of the landscapes identity.
Ickowicz captures sights and traces that remain in the aftermath of various events; a spent bonfire, a scorched field burnt in the course of a military bombing, an avalanche in the desert, rocks used to create a roadblock, or the ruins of an ancient settlement.
This strategy documents the traces of different processes and events that took place in the past, and is directed at exploring definitions of memory, history, and culture as they are revealed through the signs captured by the camera.
The journeys in which these images are taken are also related to a more general existential state, which involves a search for roots and for a sense of belonging. In this context, the concept of time is expanded: inevitably, the present, or "here-and-now" captured in these works, is viewed in relation to a chronological axis that constantly echoes the past.

Exhibitions

Solo

2017
2016
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
in 2005 traveled as Houston Fotofest to Houston, Texas; and the Gallery of Photography, Dublin, Ireland
Field of Depth, Latin Collector, New York
2003
2003
2008
2010