Welcome Reception, 2026
Duo exhibition with Cheli Jusewitz
In this joint exhibition by Cheli Jusewitz and Uri Duvdevani, each artist presents the results of very different practices. Cheli Jusewitz works on building a site-specific installation, each part of which is made of identical elements placed side by side or one on top of the other. Uri Duvdevani starts from a point of abstract drawing that crystallizes through the creative process until an image is revealed and formed.
Uri Duvdevani's drawings and paintings, displayed on the walls of the space, are also experienced in relation to Jusewitz's installation. Duvdevani's works are the product of an emergent drawing process: they include contour marking, frottage, drawings of light and shadow, and layered treatment using various materials such as blue ink pencils and oil pastels. Duvdevani makes the search for the image present through the manner of drawing and the transition from abstraction to representation.
The exhibition's title - "Welcome Reception" (Kabbalat Panim) - points to an arrival at a liminal space, one that precedes some kind of ceremonial event, but in its literal sense also describes a transition from abstraction to form. Jusewitz's sculpture "The Ascent," alongside Duvdevani's painting of an angel or a cyclopean mountain, reveal both artists' affinity for a mythic tradition embodied in visual images of sacred spaces. In their words: "We recognize our tendency to surrender to the sanctifying potential of the artistic act and the exhibition space, and yet we resist it from within - a kind of mutation of the sacred."
Curator Orit Mor
The Lobby - A Place for Art, Tel Aviv
