Tsibi Geva: After the Party

This painting After the Party was created in the wake of the apocalyptic events of October 7, when Israeli society, still gripped by shock and anxiety, was just beginning to realize the scope of the horrors that occurred on that day in the communities bordering the Gaza Strip and at the Nova party near Kibbutz Re’im. After a period of numbness and inability to work, Tsibi Geva returned to the studio. As he has done before, he used fragments of works which he attached to the canvas as a collage – a kind of “stack” that reveals and conceals creative bursts from different periods.

Here, the chaos, loss of control, and unspeakable violence of October 7 seep into the work’s veins and arteries: truncated physicality, splattered paint, violent brush strokes – all these are fused together on the canvas like torn pieces that cannot be mended into a harmonious whole, expressing the destruction of our reality.

The painting seems to “speak” the horrors of the Nova party alluded to in its title. In the artist’s words: “These paintings attempt to find a new means of creating and organizing meaning around a dark void, a psychological pit. They are desperate attempts to reorganize at a moment when the world is in turmoil.”

Tsibi Geva, Israeli, born 1951

After the Party, 2023

Acrylic, rubber, and collage on canvas 

Transcending Conflict: The John Rakolta, Jr. and Terry L. Rakolta Collection for Peace in the Middle East

Photo: © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem by Elie Posner