Dubi Harel

Dubi Harel lives in Haifa. After several decades in theoretical mathematics and computer science, he turned to art in the early 2000s. He studied photography, painting and engraving in various places and his works are widely displayed. Harel’s work is figurative and he paints and draws based on observation. Human images populate most of his paintings, drawings and prints. At a certain stage in his career, he began to be influenced by political artists and came to feel that he also has an obligation to declare the values that he grew up on – values that are disappearing from the world. During that period, he tried to express in his work the idea of “setting out the chairs on the deck of the Titanic”, believing that this expression captures many of the processes occurring today. Based on this initial thought, Harel created a series of prints depicting a large passenger ship. The ship serves as a stage and an axis for tragicomic events whose ending is known ahead of time. Harel has continued to develop this project during the past six years and has begun to use a nuclear mushroom cloud as an iconic end-of-the-world image. The mushroom cloud image serves as a backdrop for small dramas created by Harel. They include quotes from famous works in art history and sometimes light “distortions” of the images. The name he has given this series is a paraphrase of a song by Shalom Hanoch: “What do you do when you get in the morning and see the end of the world on the horizon? The same things exactly.” Or in short, “The end of the world – a user’s guide.”

Website: https://www.dubiharel.com