The sweetness of sugar, mixed with the sour taste and pungent of blood is the guiding concept of the upcoming exhibition at Dorothy Circus Gallery, from June 17th to July 25th, dedicated to Nataly Abramovich, aka Kukula. The young Israeli artist was born in a small town near Tel Aviv, inhabited mostly by former military and their families. She grew up among the ghosts of the Holocaust and the political tensions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict where she’s been reworking an interior landscape of dreams and childhood that we can find in her art. Kukula herself seemed destined to military life, so far from her colors, fantasies, obsessions and her passion for illustrated stories. Reality’s blood melts with sugar’s childhood fantasy to create a world where the characters are girls and dolls, elements that characterize all her works.
Children with scratched knees, dolls with naive and dark sensuality remind the viewer of a world of loneliness that the artist suggests even with the titles of works. Kukula’s Pop Surrealism is expressed in the alienating atmosphere in which these doll-girls with womanly body are immerged, always with animals or objects with a metaphorical value, mysterious and disturbing. Kukula’s environments are non-places where she stratifies her life experiences. With 12 oils on wood and some drawings, the artist takes us by hand in this “valley of dreams” full of rides, horses, swans and chimes, bubbles and childish games. Kukula, having specialized in illustration at the Vital-Shenkar College in Tel Aviv, moved to San Francisco where she still lives. She has exhibited in the major pop surrealism galleries like Roq La Rue, Corey Helford Gallery, Copronason Gallery. She’s in Italy for the first time at Dorothy Circus Gallery and she’ll be here at the gallery for the opening.
