'Void of any cargo

To paradise sails

The Moon Ship"

Dohko (from 'Poets on the Brink of Death', translated by Yoel Hoffman)

 

Paulownia is not the name of a mysterious female figure, although the preoccupation with women and sexuality is present in this exhibition.

It is also not the name of a distant port in a foreign city somewhere on the globe. However, the works correspond with the sea as a venue, as a memory, as a longing, and are influenced by life on the water's edge.

It could have been a story about being extinct, about moving away from the sea shore as a metaphor for mood.

Paulownia is a tree, AKA 'The Empress Tree'. Its origins are in China. This is the wood that Etty Gadish De Lange chose, and which enables her to create, on a large scale, series of artworks, some of which are presented  at the exhibition.

Light weight but stable, pliant and at the same time durable, the wood of the Paulownia tree  surrenders to the sculpting hand, yet maintains its unique character and structure, as well as a uniform texture that facilitates processing it in a wide range of shapes, cuts and reliefs.

The Paulownia tree has a hollow carrier pipe concealed in its trunk. The encounter with it led Etty Gadish De Lange to a primordial world. A world that corresponds with ancient cultures, with proximity to nature. These led her to craft it in an minimal unrefined style, leaving in it open ends as parts of reflection about time, place, material, form, and continuity.

After years in which Etty Gadish De Lange's main artistic expression tool was painting, her studio was reassigned. Room was made for the Paulownia trunks. New, large, tools were brought in. Etty Gadish De Lange's art took new shapes and forms. Cutting, hammering, sawing, sanding, joining, carving, refining - liberated thoughts, distress and pain. These were sculpted unto the wood by physical labor, turning into statues. A communication channel was established, discussing permanent residence and temporary residence Vis-à-vis the sea.

The studio became a dock. Boats besides Totems, storytelling, pensive and intuitive, different from each other, singles and groups, unpolished, imperfect. Traces of the original trunk and the fingerprints of Etty Gadish De Lange's hands are visible.

With Etty Gadish De Lange, various worlds exist simultaneously:

On the one hand, she creates small androgynous series of hardwood figurines combined with "ready-made" parts which are taken apart and then affixed to female body.

On the other hand, Etty Gadish De Lange creates works that focus on matter and deal in one form as an abstract and realistic composition, repeating itself in a non-pretentious and rough manner. A constant search for definite dosages.

A different non-consciousness, of a completely contrasting sculptural manifestation.

 

Tal Roy de Lange