ABOUT THE ARTIST
Idan Zareski was born in Haifa, Israel and he is a French citizen. Life took him through multiple countries, bearing witness to multiple races and cultures which are now a fundamental element in his work. His efforts led him to understand that his salvation had always been, literally, at his fingertips.
Idan has never attended Art School or any sort of anatomy course. His gift came to him as a need, which he understood he could no longer resist. “I don’t plan or organize, I don’t draw sketches. My raw emotions serve as the only guide. Ninety percent of my creations are shaped in less than an hour. When I work, I feel in absolute communion with a force greater than myself”.
Idan shapes his creations out of clay, water and fire, to later set them in bronze. He is still amazed by the fact that emotions cannot only take shape, but be shared, without a word…in absolute silence.
These days, Idan is completely committed to his art, working out of Costa Rica, a small piece of paradise. His wife and three girls have become his most fervent admirers.
His work has already been exhibited in France, Monaco, Switzerland, Italy, Costa Rica, Colombia, and the United States.
IDAN’S VIEWS
…When I’m at a loss for words, my hands take over. I’ve been blessed with an artist’s soul. From my childhood in Africa and through multiple pilgrimages around the world, my eyes have been nourished by images, which my hands now wish to reproduce.
Memories of people from my past, sprinkled throughout my mind, are now my personal creations, born out of clay.
These days I’m in the mood to play Creator, to shape this same Earth to which I belong and to extract my vision of man, my experience and the beauty which surrounds me.
I generally sculpt with a very lively emotion, almost in a trance… perspiration mixed with strong inspiration. At first, there is nothing but a confusing image, a mental sketch. But then, through contact with the clay, with every move of my thumb, the shape is born and my hands know; they have faith in what they create. Rapidly, the in-precise becomes precise and what was just a vague idea transforms…
I believe in my hands, they have never betrayed me. I am always amazed at what they produce when I allow them to express themselves freely. No sketches; pure creation, instinctive, spontaneous.
The topics which inspire me vary according to my mood. Sometimes fun, other times serious; it doesn’t really matter.
What is fundamental is to extract and transmit this emotion that lives in me and later find it in the faces of the people who contemplate my sculptures…
WHAT IS SAID ABOUT IDAN
Idan’s work bares shades of Africa. His sculpture is emotionally charged, his fingers, burning with a lot of strength, have a natural way to shape matter.”
In a way, they mold his deep desires to touch the heart of a territory that is not his, but that he has adopted. I say it in a metaphorical way, but to him it is very territorial, earthly and very subjective to the soul.
Jacob Karpio
Idan avec Son Altesse Sérénissime le prince Albert ll de Monaco – Art Monaco 2012 – Winner of the Prix d’Excelence du Publique- Art Monaco 2012.
