Deborah Wasserman, fine artist, contemporary artist

Installation, drawings, and paintings 2001 - 2010

portfolio
Stay

STAY, 2010
Acrylic, oil and resin on wood, variable sizes

Homeward Found, 2010

Paintings, drawings and video installation

"Born in Brazil, raised in Israel and currently living in New York City, Deborah Wasserman's work explores the theme of travel as a framework to delve into questions of home, identity, language, belonging, and destination. Wasserman's elongated paintings suggest landscapes and when grouped together, resemble vehicles moving through traffic or words arranged in sentences, whereas her smaller, rectangular paintings appear as punctuation marks. Combining acrylics, oils, resin and collage she intermixes and juxtaposes images of airplanes, safety instructions, words, sentences, traffic signs and scenic imagery."
From press release of the exhibition Homeward Found, at BINETH Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel, April 8 – May 12, 2010

Homeward Found, 2010

Homeward Found Homeward Found Homeward Found Homeward Found Homeward Found Homeward Found Homeward Found Homeward Found
Homeward Found Homeward Found Homeward Found Homeward Found Homeward Found Homeward Found Homeward Found Homeward Found
Homeward Found Homeward Found Homeward Found Homeward Found Homeward Found Homeward Found Homeward Found Homeward Found

Installation View

Homeward Found Homeward Found

HOMEWARD FOUND, 2010
Installation view - Acrylic, oil and resin on wood, variable sizes

Carry On and On

Drawings

“I see these drawings as transparent, light, otherworldly, weightless, even though they're bags & luggage: heavy, full, cluttery.   They're like luggage you would take with you to heaven: immaterial...like ghosts of their former bodily selves. Made of light.  "Everything is like this".  Everything is light.  Translucent.  Not a burden.  Gone and nearly gone.  Even this body, my constant luggage.  When will I finally put it down, with its load of hair dryers, guitars, shoes, knives?  Not too soon, I hope, and also not soon enough.  Beautiful, fragile things”. --Sean M. Feit.

Carry On and On Carry On and On Carry On and On Carry On and On Carry On and On Carry On and On  
Carry On and On Carry On and On Carry On and On Carry On and On  
Carry On and On Carry On and On Carry On and On Carry On and On

Installation View

Carry on and on installation view

CARRY ON AND ON, 2010
Mixed media on paper, 35” x  7”

wanderlust

WANDERLUST, 2006
Installation view.
Acrylic, oil and resin on wood, variable size

WANDERLUST, 2006

Painting installation

“Deborah Wasserman’s work has both mystical and comic elements of pathmaking and path-finding. Transience and flux, suggests Wasserman, are the permanent markers in one’s life journey. The artist’s vision is sensitive to the conditions of liminality, the inbetweeness of spaces, both spiritual and material” --Dominique Nahas, curator.
Born in Brasil and raised in Israel, Deborah Wasserman humorously refers to herself as a postmodern ‘Wandering Jew’. In Wanderlust, she expresses the mental experience of exile and explores the tangent between longing and be - longing. She explains, “The relationship between a journey and its destination fascinates me because I see them as one and the same.”
From press release of the exhibition Wanderlust, at the AIR Gallery, NYC 2006.

Wanderlust, 2006

 

Installation View

WANDERLUST, 2006
iinstallation view -Acrylic, oil and resin on wood, variable sizes


PASSAGES, 2004
Acrylic, Oil paint and resin on wood, 20" x 3"
 

PASSAGES, 2004
Painting installation

"The installation Passages consists of a series of images which alternate between the image of planes arriving and departing from an anonymous airport locale and an alternating latticework of maps. The paintings are made in the form of long, horizon-like canvases, which both evoke the movement of planes, heavy with the many lives they contain for short yet important durations of time, and are also deft expressions of the elastic narratives which such durations represent, as these utilitarian objects speed back and forth from left to right, forward and backward in time. They are contrasted with the maps, which though they give names and specific distances to the many points on a compass between one horizon and the next. They lend no greater order to our perception of the planes, but only add a complex layer to the delayed meaning we can bring to our experience of her work. Wasserman seeks to trace the relationship between destiny and destination and finds the state of longing (to belong)a singular place to be."
From press release of  (B) longing  David Gibson, curator and critic, NYC 2004.

 
PASSAGES, 2004
                           Installation View
 

 

    
   
 
       
 

 

    
      PASSAGES, 2004
Acrylic, Oil paint and resin on wood, 20" x 3" each		   PASSAGES, 2004
Detail from installation: Acrylic, Oil paint and resin on wood, 20" x 3" each, 60 panels total

 
     
     
     
(Un)Still life 2003
multi-media Installation

The installation (Un)Still Life is based on the Frida Kahlo painting Viva La Vida (Long Lives Life!) This painting shows a lush display of fruits and vegetables, with stuffed animals and a bride-doll. It symbolizes cycles in our lives (growth, ripening and decay) which are formed by constant change. Inspired by this painting Deborah recreated the same tableau with real objects, then filmed and animated it on video. In (Un)Still Life the fruits and vegetables shed parts of themselves as they are cut and transformed. To further examine the relationships between the still and the moving images, Deborah created 104 small panels based on each animated transition. The complete installation includes the paintings and the video.

  

(UN)STILL LIFE, 2003
Installation detail: Oil on wood, 104 panels, 2.5” x 2.5” each

 

    
      from left to right: (UN)STILL LIFE, 2003, Still from video, Installation details
 
     
     
     
THINGS, 2002
multi-media Installation

"We continue to make stories, and to use stories, because we need them to define ourselves, to serve as lenses through which we understand, conceive and create our lives. Without them, we would simply disappear."

Exerpt from video dialogue.

 

THINGS(CAME) (AND WILL) DISAPPEAR, 2002
Still from video, 6:35 min

 

    
    From left to right: THINGS(CAME) (AND WILL) DISAPPEAR, 2002 Installation details: Oil on wood, five (out of ten) panels, 20" x 25" each; EASY DIRECTIONS, 2003 Oil on wood, 34"x 66"; INSTALLATION VIEW: Four (out of ten) panels, 20" x 25" each, one panel 34" x 66" artificial grass, video monitor, audio piece
 
     
     
     
 
 

 

UNTITLED, 2003

  
   
 

UNTITLED, detail, 2003
Acrylic and oil on wood, five panels, 38"x 7" each
 

UNTITLED, 2003,
Installation view: Acrylic and oil on wood, five panels, 38"x 7" each

UNTITLED, detail, 2003
Acrylic and oil on wood, five panels, 38"x 7" each

UNTITLED, 2003,
Installation view: Acrylic and oil on wood, five panels, 38"x 7" each


 
 
     
     
     
   

TERRITORIES, 2003
Installation view: Acrylic and Oil on wood, 10 panels, 6” x”6 each panel, table

TERRITORIES, 2003        
 
 
 

TERRITORIES, 2003
Detail: Acrylic and Oil on wood, 10 panels, 6” x”6 each panel, table

TERRITORIES, 2003
Detail: Acrylic and Oil on wood, 10 panels, 6” x”6 each panel, table

TERRITORIES, 2003
Installation view: Acrylic and Oil on wood, 10 panels, 6” x”6 each panel, table
 
     
     
   
 

(IN)SIGHTS, detail, 2003. Oil on wood,

 

 (IN)SIGHTS, 2003
 
   

(IN)SIGHTS, 2003 Installation view: Oil on wood, 8 panels, 6"x 6" each, shelf