Ori Gersht, artist, in conversation with Linda Friedlaender, Head of Education, YCBA
at home: Artists in Conversation Join us for lively and inspiring conversations with some of today’s most notable artists. "at home: Artists in Conversation" brings together curators and artists to discuss various artistic practices and insights into their work.
About Ori Gersht Born in Israel in 1967, Gersht has lived in London for more than thirty years. He received his BA in photography, film, and video from University of Westminster, London, and in 1995 received his MA in photography from the Royal College of Art. In his work, Gersht engages with the relationship between history, memory, and landscape. He often adopts a poetic, metaphorical approach to explore the difficulties of visually representing conflict and violent events or histories. Gersht approaches this challenge not simply through his choice of imagery, but by pushing the technical limitations of photography, questioning its claim to truth. Frequently referencing art history, Gersht’s imagery is uncannily beautiful—the viewer is visually seduced before being confronted with darker and more complex themes, presenting a compulsive tension between beauty and violence. His work has included an exploration of his own family’s experiences during the Holocaust, a series of post-conflict landscapes in Bosnia, and a celebrated trilogy of slow-motion films in which traditional still lifes explode on screen.
Gersht’s work has appeared in numerous international exhibitions including "The Expanded Landscape," J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2021); "Moment of Change," SFMOMA, San Francisco (2016); "But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise," Guggenheim Museum, New York (2016); "Slivers," Tel Aviv Museum of Contemporary Art (2015); Seduced by Art, National Gallery, London (2012); "Significant Objects: The Spell of Still Life," Norton Simon Museum, Los Angeles (2012); "The Forest & Blow Up," Yale Center for British Art, New Haven (2007); and "Twilight: Photography in the Magic Hour," Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2007), to name a few. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including The Constantiner Photography Award for an Israeli Artist, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, in 2000. Gersht is Professor of Photography at the University for the Creative Arts in Kent. He lives and works in London.
This program is presented through the generosity of the Terry F. Green 1969 Fund for British Art and Culture.
