Ilit Azoulay

inkjet print, framed, 2013, no. 4 in an edition of 5; accompanied by a signed Certificate of Authenticity and a signed label from the Braverman Gallery, Tel Aviv-Jaffa (3)

Ilit Azoulay, Finally without End (Berlin, 2014), pp. 26-7

While this inkjet print has not been examined out of its frame, it appears to be in generally excellent condition. The colors remain rich and saturated with no apparent fading.
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This photograph comes from the collection of Dale & Doug Anderson. After years spent extensively collecting Native American and art made from glass, the New York and Palm Beach-based couple became enamored with contemporary photography, focusing primarily on non-American artists working at the turn of the 20th century. The  Andersons have donated more than 1,500 works from their various collections to museums across the United States, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. They co-founded in 2003 the Association of Israel’s Decorative Arts. 

Additional works from the collection of Dale & Doug Anderson can be found in lots 52, 58, 60-1, 65, 68, 74, 77-9, and 81-3.

In her 2013 series Panic in Lack of an Event, from which the present photograph comes, Ilit Azoulay critically dissects the act of artistic creation. The objects featured come from urban sites, her studio, and even the building of her representing dealer, Braverman Gallery in Tel Aviv. Every object pictured is selected purposely, photographed separately, and linked to the act of creation: from initial research in art books (the old photograph seen in the upper left), to the production of her photographs (a tripod at center), to exhibition (the lamp rack in the upper right). The final image is composed digitally as a large-scale panoramic photomontage that looks like apocalyptic chaos without hierarchy or scale. Out of context, these objects lose their initial function: the chairs are upside down, there is no window behind the curtain, no film or slides can be projected on the torn, red screen. The composition quite literally shows the artistic explosion that the artist requires for her creation.

Born in 1972, Azoulay is recognized as one of the most influential international contemporary photographers. She was featured in the 2015 exhibition Ocean of Images: New Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and her works are also in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Azoulay was nominated for the 2014 Rencontres d’Arles Discovery Award and the 2015 Prix Pictet for Photography.