Zadok Ben-David

During the Fine Art taster week I decided to look at an artist who worked in a medium that I had researched before but was totally different. Zadok Ben-David's installation Blackfield is such an eye catching piece and the way that the view changes depending on where the viewer is stood is extremely interesting.  In comparison to Junko Mori's pieces which are worked by hand before being forged together, the metal in Blackfield has been cut out so delicately that each piece looks almost organic and the due to the sheer volume of them they actually look like a field when viewed as a whole. 

 

 

Each individual piece looks so fragile that it is hard to believe that something as solid as steel has been used to make them as they don’t look strong enough. More than 12,000 individual pieces of steel were used and although they ended up in 3D they were originally images from Victorian text books of that Ben-David copied out and cut from steel. I think this adds another level of interest to the piece as it has changed from a flat 2D illustration into 3D and isn’t based on real life natural form.

 

 

Each of the pieces has been hand painted on one side so that as the viewer circles around the piece the field looks black at one angle and suddenly becomes filled with colour at another. This illusion like concept makes the piece look so beautiful from whichever angle it is viewed at that it is easy to see why smaller pieces in Perspex boxes with mirrored panels have been made to sell as the piece has such aesthetic qualities it can be used as a decorative feature as well as a piece of art.

 

 

When looking at the piece one of the things that becomes obvious is the amount of time and level of precision that was there during each stage of the production, from sourcing the images from the books, to cutting them into the flower shapes and painting them to placing them in the sand so that each colour is in a certain place in the overall piece.