Debbie Kampel | Abba Richman | Rakefet Viner-Omar

Mankind has always shown concern with means of recognition, whether it be national, religious, commercial or personal. Throughout time we have either asserted our visual identity by means of art, fashion, symbols, and colors, or tried to change and even disguise our association. We have grown familiar with patterns that evoke immediate emotional response which may concurrently create equal but diametrically opposed reactions in others.

Debbie Kampel's works reveal the competing symbols of identity and identification, as seen through license plates, truck manufacturs' emblems, uniforms and the owners' highly personal decoration of their trucks. Her classification of soldiers is solely by uniform, never personal. The soldier must make immediate identity checks through documentation, visual cues, or personal objectives. Kampel allocates enough ambiguity to invite the viewer to form contradictory assumptions.

Abba Richman's images encapsulate in real time, the whole gambit of jostling identity codes as experienced on the street. Richman's mastery of recognizing the elegance of serendipity, allows paradoxical emotional responses.

Rakefet Viner-Omar explores the face value of the potato. She lays out the unaltered potato on the floor, as is, globular and brown, seeking to evoke recognition. This amorphous object has been absorbed into our culture, assuming belonging. The potato, the antithesis of the indigenous and the native, is reinvented by its adoptive country.

Kampel, Richman and Viner- Omar, present their work as non- subjective material, permitting the observer to explore and define its identity.

Anitra Lehman
Exhibition Curator

Debbie Kampel

Abba Richman

Rakefet Viner-Omar