Benjamin Haasnoot 

Benjamin Haasnoot

born and raised in kibbutz yiron, ISRAEL

Lives & works in Kfar Saba, ISRAEL

I like to look at the way we humans, relate to our past. Romanticization of primitive times in which man seems to have been more connected to his environment and lived with nature in harmony. I grow up in the countryside, on the Galilee mountains in the north part of Israel. As a kid i use to wander around in nature, admiring the wildlife and plants. i loved the stories our techers told us about nature and prehistoric times and often try to bring to life those stories by building primitive tool and drawing birds and animals. as an artist  that memory still motivates me to recreate  ancient experiences but now using  modern means combined with traditional and ancient crafts.

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In my work as a sculptor and artist I use images and ideas from various fields, such as biology and geology. At the same time, I do not treat nature in a scientifically researching way, but try to use the same principles that are found in nature and apply it in my sculptures. When I create a sculpture in the shape of an animal or a rock, it is important to me that the sculpture has a certain level of anatomical or formal truth, even if in the end the sculpture comes to serve a cultural functional purpose. The raw materials I work with, especially wood and ceramics, sometimes disguise themselves as other materials and at the same time do not hide the properties that characterize them. The material I work with carries a natural truce that also exists in the material he is trying to emulate. For example growth rings in pine wood that simulate fat rings in salmon meat.

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I am interested in embodying in my sculptures some primitive essence, through the materials that were common in ancient cultures like wood and clay, and through the forms and shapes of objects typical of tribal cultures like the Poyke pot and the canoe boat. At the same time I can not ignore the fact that my ability to create objects, depends on access to modern technology and tools. There is a gap created between my desire to go back to the past and the realization that it might be impossible. There is only a shell and a semblance of a glorious and fictitious past that I pour into my sculptures..