artist profile
Ori Gersht
born
1963
lives and works
London, UK
education
BA, Westminster University, London, UK, 1992
MA, Department of Photography, Royal College of Art, London, UK, 1995
about the artist
Armed with his camera, Ori Gersht labors to extend the capabilities of photography by venturing into an exploration of that which cannot be captured. Technology becomes very important for him as he manages a host of impossibilities—his images are saturated with emotional resonance; they record the split second of a moment that even the human eye cannot register or they narrate the often bereft historical past of sites and places. The visual results are always sublime, with a dash of the elegiac. Endemic in his compositions are the dichotomies of violence and beauty, psychological and literal realities, as well as creation and destruction. Currently living and working in London, Gersht is a professor of photography at the University for the Creative Arts in Rochester, UK. Frequently reviewed and written about in international art magazines, periodicals, and journals, Gersht is a prolific writer himself and contributes articles on his own work as well as the work of others. His photographs have been reproduced and discussed in many catalogues featuring contemporary Israeli photography and other publications on contemporary art. Several monographs have also been published on respective series. He has had solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Jewish Museum in New York, USA; the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., USA; and the Tate Britain in London, UK, and is making preparations for an upcoming solo show at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, USA. The Tel Aviv Museum of Art has shown Gersht’s works on multiple occasions over the years, most recently in Roundabout, a touring group exhibition that traveled from the City Gallery Wellington in New Zealand to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Israel.