exhibition catalog, 1995

Unconscious Reality 1994

Excerpt from “Out of Art’s Mysteries” by Felix Rosiner

Basically leaning towards figurative art, April makes an
easy turn into the “abstract” and often combines the two in to
one. He does it with a precise tact of an artist and with a sure
feeling for genre. This feeling (so badly needed not only in music
and literature alone) is a rare quality amongst the painters. Aharon
April has a full measure of it.
Just as words are obsolete in expressing a strong feeling,
so does the line in April’s works outlive itself, and the forms
dissolve in the hue, and there only remains, at times, a charcoal
mark, looking through the painting like a hint, like a sign of the
vanished word -figure.
For many reasons one may contend that April’s art is not
limited by the painterly aspect of his creativity. In his works one
can clearly see his aspiration to combine plastic aspects of
painting (static by nature) with dynamics, i.e. to cross the
borders of plastic arts. The viewer who enters his world is
offered by the painter a certain special “being” – in time, flowing
in tension, fullness and concentration. In this deep emotional
colouring of the “time flow” of April’s paintings consists still
another secret of his art.

Visitors from Overseas 1992

Ilya Kabakov

… complex, deep paintings with many levels of meaning. Two meanings are functioning separately – the meaning of the dramatic subject and the colour curtain covering it – and between them there is an intricate and mysterious relationship, and at the same time a rupture relationship. What is in the depth lives long; what is on the surface is done instantaneously, and therefrom comes a strange and tormenting relation between that which is “always” and that which is “now”…

Jean Bollack

The movement of fragmented masses is not that of decomposition. It is not there
that the initial form of an ensemble is found. Neither is it that the particles are pulled into a
primordial flow. That impression could be given; it would have neglected to sense the
rupture that preceeds the flux and that stands behind its demise. The explosion has
happened; it, too, has cancelled itself. The flux does not transfigure the motifs, neither
does it transfer nor relegate to the vibration of a transcendence.
The rhythm that radiates from alternations of colour has something more
elementary in it. It restores vague impulses that are like virtualities of form, forms before
form. They come into the world, assert themselves, call to and associate with one
another, or differentiate themselves from one another through dissociation. The chance of
distinction is born of diversity, and thus of the similar. Diversification makes its origin
seen everywhere; it proceeds from the variation of indefinitely reproduced forms. The
outpouring could extend its influence, invest its own depth in the torrent of productions
that, having become visible, fight over the same space.
In the short space of a glance, a flood makes the painting. The waves lack room to
unfurl and to vanish, they ebb and break. So do they multiply and recall the force of
matter, with 2 dynamism which engulfs that which it brings into being. An animal or
human figure emerges from its elementary and vital anticipation. The same form has
already become different, identifiable, attributable, torn from the series of similarities.
The painter, for his part, tears himself from his pictorial momentum, he interprets it,
deepens it, interrupts it perhaps.
The effect of contemplation is initially that of the artist. A rough shape finds its
contours in the depth of movement, a scene of combat, a love scene, a horse falling, the
flight of a woman’s body. Matter unfolds, becomes real in the process of representation;
we tell ourselves that painting has changed its nature in taking on meaning. It is as though
meaning had made use of painting, at a time when the situation of a story, most often
biblical, is inscribed, when a reference is obscurely determined, like an element of a
hidden and decipherable matter.
The reader wonders about the relation of the two orders. How does he go, what
does he do in going from the sovereign order of a purely pictorial dynamism to the other,
of external significance? The story does not form the subject of painting as it did, and yet
it is the centre, it is buried inside. Perhaps the dynamism has moved by itself, in its
exasperation, in order to be elsewhere, outside its force. The pictorial momentum would
then have been shattered, and concentrated in its shattering not only to make way for the
reading of successive layers; it would also make itself recognized, sovereign in the
deciphered image, in the flight of regained desire, in the incandescence of Lot’s
daughters, or in the white flame of the body of Putiphar. Painting is realized and cancels
itself, by appearing in its violence, naked and raw.
April advisedly plays from both sides. He has mastery of the resources of
explosion, previously brought into the open; he handles them as if he wanted to show that
the rhythm of proliferation alone did not manage to catch up to its aim, and that it was
necessary, or at least that he had a right to, move on to a second degree. Abandon does
not let itself be controlled. However, it could be recaptured, and directed within the
structures of meaning.
The process implies a return, a reflection on the pictorial act. The plenitude that we
accord to modern art is not self-sufficient. A signification intellectualizes it, it joins and
seconds the signification, as though it wanted to give it another power by overturning
and, in a certain sense rolling up, the initial dynamism. The duality of this internal
transfer characterizes the style, it makes itself seen and perceived. It attracts or disconcerts.
Meaning prevails. It has seized the momentum, and moulds it. This is so true that
in certain paintings the movement of representation no longer proceeds from a subtle and
very successive differentiation of forms, but is superimposed in a separate light, like the
strokes of ink that mark a landscape of burning sand. The two orders are then face to
face, irreducible. More often, the movement goes beyond the limits of its power of
structuring and leads on to a metamorphosis. The metamorphosis will then be different,
and will belong to a more largely cultural order, moral perhaps, as through necessity.
The strokes of colour do not reach through to the end. Their way is not lost, it is to
be found beyond a break, we meet it; for lack of it, we construct it. Art is challenged by
the feeling that it should be considered in itself, and be confronted with our historical
experience. The dialogue which has been established is intense and harsh, it does not lack
in violence; it opposes the freest power of invention and a position of the artist as
exterior to art, a distance dictated by an independant system of values. Scanning the
singularity of a surpassing, we question ourselves, faced with the break of a struggle
inherent in the artistic experience, heavily committed on the side of its textual models, and
no less vigourously, and as though adventurously, and experimentally, separated from
Them.

Jacob the Sheperd 1987