Oded Halahmy

Oded Halahmy (born in 1938 under the name Hebaizah) lives and works in New York, though his world circumscribes a triangle whose two other points are Iraq, his country of birth, and his second homeland of Israel, where he arrived with his family at the age of thirteen.

The exhibition presents Halahmy's sculptures from the 1970s, when he settled in New York to develop the modernist influences he absorbed from his teacher, Anthony Caro, and search for a personal idiom that would express his Middle Eastern roots. It was during these years that he investigated unconventional techniques and forms of expression, creating wooden mock-ups of sculptures which he later cast in bronze and painted – a style and practice that accompany him to this day.

Halahmy's sculptures are modeled on human dimensions. The secret of their power lies in their minimalist lines – which seem at times almost two-dimensional, or random, yet the relationships between them are profound and precise. Though his sculptures strive upwards, their lower parts contain horizontal elements – seemingly a foundation, but in fact a kind of reaction to the upward pull, reflecting, more than anything else, the artist's desire to remain grounded, close to the earth.