“In her openness she gives and takes, she is the audience and the artist, she is the cup and the plate” Richard Flantz 1998
Daniel Davis (1950 – 2011) saw himself as a link in a long chain of traditional Middle Eastern ceramics. His ceramic works were deeply influenced by the language of forms of the Middle Eastern potters and the Muslim architecture and the burial structures found throughout the Middle East. Davis was concerned with locality in his selection of raw materials and the meaning implied as a concept in creating a unique language as derived from the local world of forms.
At the beginning of the 1980’s in the three years that Davis and Adina Bar-On lived in Metulla, in his search for his path as a potter, he became acquainted with the potters of the Lebanese village Rashaya Al Fukhar. A Christian Greek Orthodox village on the Western foothills of the Hermon Mountain, about 20 km from Metulla, which was and still is a local pottery center. The work of the village potters is impressive with a high level of skill and refined language of Middle Eastern forms. Davis viewed the potters of this village as well as the potters of Hebron and Gaza as mentors that should be learnt from, appreciated and honored. The desire to visit the village Rashaya Al Fukhar accompanied Davis for many years and remained unfulfilled.
During a visit to the potters quarters on the outskirts of Cairo, Davis was intrigued by their work methods and the mixture of industrial production technology and the traditional craft community. This tour left a deep mark on Davis, as if a roots tour in an invented homeland.
The works of Davis have a fresh magic that is not reminiscent of anything and at the same time dialog with ancient burial structures, Islamic minarets, underground catacombs and ossuaries combined with simple modern forms like cylinders, cones and spheres that look like functional vessels or upside-down bowls.
In his special way, Davis’s works radiate infinite freedom, shuffling the cards of all that was familiar in the field of Israeli ceramics in the 90’s. His studio in the port of Tel Aviv was arranged with a seemingly incidental nonchalance. The rickety hut, with the rustle of the waves in the sea, was surrounded by barrels and baths of clay in various stages of preparation, slabs for drying clay, mesh for sieving the muddy clay. All these hung on the walls outside the studio or were strewn around the inside.
The studio was a kind of temple for the wheel placed as an altar in the organized chaos. In this chaotic space, Davis succeeded in releasing Israeli ceramics from the organized rules characteristic of the 90’s, in a similar way that Peter Voulkos made his contribution in the second half of the 20th century to American ceramics and the world by releasing the last grip of tradition from an ancient field with roots thousands of years before the Industrial revolution. Davis broke boundaries of Israeli ceramics in several ways: he instilled in the concept of local a different meaning that was accepted in Israeli ceramics at the time, relating to Palestinian traditional pottery; he used the wheel, planted deeply in the world of traditional craft, infusing it with contemporary meaning. Moreover, Davis was endowed with an inherent understanding of spirituality in the simple functional vessel. He rarely made functional work but used it regularly as the starting point in his making. He drew on his work with a raw expressivity – often based on local images and iconography (mostly a variety of animals) as well as vibrant abstract patches that were no less defiant.
In his last years Davis worked with paper, text and Judaica, inspired by Jewish tradition, with the same free spirit and discovery as he did with clay. His making moved between acknowledgement of elevated spiritual forces and love for corporeal humanity – torn and fragile.
Curator: Shlomit Bauman
Opening: Thursday, 10/4/25, 19:30
Book launch – artist monograph: Wednesday, 16/4/25, 19:00- For registration
Gallery talk: Friday, 25/04/2025, 11:30
Book launch – Visions of Potters: Thursday, 22/5/25, 17:00- For registration
Sacrifice, Adina Bar-on (Davis) sound art: Saturday, 24/5/25, 11:30- For registration
Closing: Saturday, 24/5/25, 14:00
