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- Hyperallergic
56 HENRY presents a solo booth featuring recent works by Israeli American artist Ohad Meromi at EXPO Chicago 2024, showcasing four pieces: two painting collages—Untitled (Hammer and Sickle), 2024 and Untitled (Centaur), 2024; a medium-sized sculpture, Crutch (2023); and an almost monumental, both in size and meaning, sculpture titled Expulsion (2018-2024).
Meromi’s art practice navigates a seemingly paradoxical yet dialectic relationship with positivity, reimagining monuments as sites for historical reckoning and cultural negotiation. Engaging with the present through various artistic creations, Meromi expands the notion of art as fluid spaces of contention, transition, and liberation.
His works stimulate conversations on collective memory, identity, and social justice, integrating performance, video, collages, installation, and public engagement. Drawing from diverse sources like religion, ancient artifacts, and pop culture, Meromi's playful yet profound synthesis invites viewers to explore the intersections between the personal and the communal, sparking dialogues encompassing politics and aesthetics.
Expulsion features disfigured figures, possibly Adam and Eve, rendered grotesque in polyurethane foam, challenging conventional representations. Crutch, a steel figure with a peg leg and wooden crutch, symbolizes contemporary society's struggles and resonates with influences from artists like Kazimir Malevich and Xanti Schawinsky.
With geometric forms and a bright, reduced color palette reminiscent of suprematist painting, Meromi's collages evoke pure artistic expression, challenging entrenched political and art historical narratives. His art serves as a powerful agent of transformation, inviting us to reconsider how we commemorate the past and imagine the future within our shared cultural landscape.
Ohad Meromi graduated from Bezalel Academy of Art and went on to receive his MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts. He has exhibited at venues and events including The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; The Tel Aviv Museum of Art; The 2nd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art; The Lyon Biennial, France; Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin; Magasin 3, Stockholm; De Appel Museum, Amsterdam; Sculpture Center, New York; MoMa PS1, New York; and Art in General, New York.