Tel Aviv : Tamir Zadok and Ziv Balbirsky examine schooling, the body, and self-perception
Through two very different artistic practices, Tamir Zadok and Ziv Balbirsky explore a shared question: how does an individual construct a sense of self when confronted with an environment beyond their control? Presented together in an exhibition at Rosenfeld Gallery in Tel Aviv, their works offer two complementary perspectives. Zadok examines how a group responds when the established order breaks down, while Balbirsky turns inward, exploring intimate experience, the body, and the difficulty of recognizing oneself.
At the heart of the presentation dedicated to Tamir Zadok is The Art School, a new video work developed over the course of a year with the participation of art students.
In the opening minutes, a drone lands on a rotating platform inside an educational institution. This seemingly simple gesture sets off a sequence of actions that unfold with the precision of a protocol.
Gradually, however, the school's usual functioning begins to unravel.
The educational space transforms into an almost self-contained environment. Tools, equipment, and materials originally intended for teaching take on new functions, becoming components of an improvised survival system.
Zadok blurs the boundaries between cinematic fiction, performance, and installation. Traditional visual arts education, with its classical drawing and sculpture exercises and references to art history, coexists with gestures inspired by artistic avant-gardes, including abstraction, formalism, minimalism, and installation art.
The school gradually becomes something more than a place of learning. It turns into a space where students and their teacher must find ways to organize themselves in the face of a situation they can no longer control.
Zadok himself occasionally appears at the center of these actions. In one scene, he carries plinths on his back in what seems like an endless physical effort. The sequence takes on an almost absurd, burlesque quality. It also evokes important references in Israeli art while retaining the humor characteristic of his work.
Ziv Balbirsky: Painting What Cannot Be Seen
With Ziv Balbirsky, the focus shifts from the collective to the intimate.
A graduate of the Beit Berl Academy of Arts in 2025, Balbirsky received several distinctions during her studies, including the Academy's Excellence Scholarship in 2024 and 2025, as well as the Kfar Saba Gallery's Solo Exhibition Award in 2025. In 2026, she also presented her work as part of the artists' incubator at the Fresh Paint art fair.
Her paintings begin with remarkably ordinary scenes. The bathroom in her apartment becomes her primary subject. Rather than depicting her body or face with precision, however, Balbirsky works from reflections distorted by steam, water, and condensation. The result lies somewhere between figuration and abstraction.
Her works emerge from photographic documentation of everyday life. She selects the images that capture her attention and translates them primarily into oil paintings on canvas, while also working with pencil drawing and gouache.
What interests her most is precisely what resists clear representation.
In Balbirsky's work, the bathroom becomes a deeply personal space. A mirror would normally allow us to see ourselves clearly. In her paintings, however, it produces an uncertain image. Steam blurs the contours of the face and body. Water alters the mirror's surface. The reflection becomes unstable, almost unfamiliar.
This difficulty in recognizing oneself becomes the starting point for an exploration of identity and bodily perception. Balbirsky examines the gap between our inner experience of ourselves and the way our bodies actually appear.
Paradoxically, it is when she can no longer clearly distinguish her own face that she seems to feel closest to her image. Blurriness is therefore not an imperfection to be corrected. It becomes a pictorial language in its own right.
Water, steam, and gradually disappearing reflections are transformed into paint. What is inherently fleeting becomes permanent on the canvas.
“Painting it allows me to linger there, to stay a little longer,” Balbirsky explains.
In Tamir Zadok's work, the challenge is to reconstruct the world using whatever means are available. In Ziv Balbirsky's, it is to accept that we cannot always see ourselves clearly. Their approaches may differ, but they share the same underlying intuition: art can transform uncertainty into a space for observation, experimentation, and creation.
The works of Tamir Zadok and Ziv Balbirsky are on view at Rosenfeld Gallery in Tel Aviv until December 5.
Caroline Haïat
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