Rotem Reshef


Rotem Reshef is an abstract, process-based Action painter based in New York and Tel Aviv.

Education and early career

Reshef is a graduate of HaMidrasha – Faculty of the Arts at Beit Berl Academic College, and holds a master's degree from Reinwardt Academy Amsterdam. Reshef was a recipient of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation scholarship and participated in the Inaugural Exhibition of The Museum of Israeli Art, Ramat Gan.

Artistic tradition and practice

Reshef is a process-based action painter, working in two and three dimensional forms, widely known for her immersive site-specific painting installations.
Following the tradition of Abstract Expressionist painters such as Jackson Pollock, Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler, her work is also mentioned in reference to Mark Rothko, Christopher Wool, Sam Gilliam, Katharina Grosse, Sam Falls and Claudio Parmiggiani. Reshef's practice is characterised by a "Control and Release" technique, in which she pours diluted paint on a horizontal canvas, tilting it and imprinting on it to create layered gestural compositions.
Reshef's imprinting technique also follows a process similar to “cameraless photography”, commonly known as photograming, but with painterly materials instead of the chemicals and light sensitive papers used in that technique.

Bodies of work and exhibitions

Since 2016 Reshef has been exhibiting different forms of painting-installation, in which unstretched scrolls of paintings create a three-dimensional, overlapping experience for the viewing audience. Her most recent painting-installation is “Arcadia”,that debuted as a solo exhibition at the Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, New York, in October 2019. Alluding to Nicholas Poussin’s painting “Et In Arcadia Ego”, the installation deals with the tension between the picturesque landscape and environment of the museum’s natural surroundings, and with the potential of disturbance and the suspended aggression that lies underneath the surface, both in American and in Israeli societies.
Reshef’s first Installation “Control l Release” was exhibited in ArtSpace TLV gallery, presenting about 44 meters of painting scrolls, hung from the ceiling to the floor, and surrounding the gallery. The exhibition was accompanied with a two-part catalogue, "Control l Release" and "Imprints", with texts by the New York-based critic and artist, Stephen Maine, and by the Los Angeles-based curator, Sagi Refael.
In 2017 Reshef had installed her large-scale piece “Time Traveler” in a solo exhibition at the Tall Wall Space in the University of La Verne, California, following an invitation from Dion Johnson, curator of the University of La Verne art galleries. The process of installing that piece on site was documented by photographer and videographer Eric Minh Swenson.
"Time Traveler" was created with six scrolls of paintings interwoven horizontally and vertically into a beautiful, color-blended monumental grid. The entire installation symbolized the four seasons as a visual loop of the passage of time, with each season interlacing to form one cohesive tapestry. The canvases depict varied techniques, color schemes and atmospheres, reflecting of the era we live in, flooded by images in a non-linear way from all directions. The six scroll paintings are merged together in a collision of simultaneous climates, alluding to appearances of global warming phenomenon as rain and storms in the summer, and heat waves in the winter.
Due to the modular and site-specific nature of “Time Traveler”, its second iteration was installed in a new configuration. Following the invitation by Rachel T. Schmid, Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at the Kwan Fong Art Gallery in the California Lutheran University, Reshef had installed “Time Traveler: Part ll - Compass”, as a more politically charged version of the original artwork. By titling it "Compass", Reshef suggested a conceptual, artistic lighthouse, directing the viewers to inner introspection, at a time of lack of political and social leaders that can direct their countries and communities onto safe grounds. In this polemic era, the monumentality of the piece offered a sanctuary of silent observation and infinite interpretations to the viewers, suggesting that they follow their own path and inner feelings, and not necessarily what politicians want them to do.
In the summer of 2018 Reshef presented two new bodies of work, the outdoor installation “Intervals”, on the facade of the Zaritsky Artists’ House in Tel Aviv, and “Spectrum”, at the Soho House in West Hollywood, California.
“Spectrum” manifested Reshef's interest in the process of art making, and in the different ways to depict the elusive nature of the passage of time and of the fleeting seasons. The 22 paintings in this series, presented monochromatic stages inspired by the different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, stressing the existing yet invisible rays of light known to science. On the shorter end of the spectrum is the ultraviolet waves of radiation, while on the longer end of the spectrum is the infrared wave of light. These both ends also mark the shifting tonalities and full range of hues between warm colors of reds and yellows, to cold colors of blues and purples, also sensualizing a change of moods and atmospheres, from somber to cheerful, from coolness to passion.
Between the years 2018-2019, Reshef had exhibited three site-specific outdoor murals on the facade of the Zaritsky Artists׳ House in Tel Aviv. The first mural, “Intervals”, presented a faux architectural facade with twenty “windows” revealing bold, abstract monochrome paintings. Embodying tonal transitions from the scale of warm to cool colors, these works effectively highlighted a hierarchy of atmospheres in the passage of the seasons through the shades, temperatures and emotional qualities affected by shortening and lengthening cycles of hours and days over the course of a year. Displaying Intervals on the wall of the Artists House comprised the completion of a circle and a gesture to the values of abstract painting represented in early Israeli art by Joseph Zaritsky, for whom this venue is named, and a homage to the movement he cofounded, "Ofakim Hadashim".
Reshef’s second mural project at the Artists’ House, “Eden in Two Acts”, was divided into two parts, and was specifically produced to react to the second round of elections in Israel in September 2019.
The first part of the mural was launched in August 2018, prior to the elections and in order to raise awareness to the importance of voting. The second part of the mural was launched on November 2019, and reacted to the elections’ results. Both “acts” of the project featured different abstract paintings, that alluded to the theme of “Lost Paradise”, and to the tension between to harmonious potential of living in peace in the middle east, and specifically in Israel, and was Reshef’s most directly political body of work to date.
Alongside Reshef's immersive painting installations, she continued developing her “imprinting” paintings, resulting with her “Ghost Libraries” and “Fossil” series of 2017-2018, and “Habitat” of 2019.
Earlier bodies of work present Reshef's technique of painting without brushes, after developing her tilting method of paint use in 2010.

Personal life

Reshef is married to businessperson and academic administrator Shai Reshef. He is the founder and president of the University of the People. They have four children.

Selected exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

Group exhibitions
Reshef's monumental outdoor installation “Intervals” received a wide coverage in Israeli press, and was written about in an article by Avraham Balaban in Ha’aretz newspaper.
Reshef's large-scale painting installation “Time Traveler”, shown in her solo exhibition at the Tall Wall Space in the University of La Verne, California, in 2017, was praised in a review published in the Huffington Post by Los Angeles-based art critic Shana Nys Dambrot. Soon after, a second iteration of “Time Traveler” was exhibited at the Kwan Fong Art Gallery in the California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, California, titled “Time Traveler: Part ll - Compass”.
In 2014 Reshef was awarded Honorable Mention at LICC London International Creative Competition.
In 2010 Reshef was awarded First Prize at Art &Business category in the 4th International Arte Laguna, Italy.
In 1987 Reshef was awarded a promising young artist scholarship from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation.
2015 SVA's Summer Residency Program, School of Visual Arts, New York, NY.