Dan Reisner
Inspiration, bronze, 40 cm x 25 cm x 8 cm (Photo: Avi Amsalem)
Love, bronze, 31 cm x 48 cm x 8 cm (Photo: Avi Amsalem)
Wound, 26 cm x 31 cm x 12 cm (Photo: Avi Amsalem)
Epiphany, bronze, 36 cm x 24 cm x 35 cm (Photo: Avi Amsalem)
Afloat, bronze, 57 cm x 35 cm x 48 cm (Photo: Avi Amsalem)
Confinement, plaster of paris with metal pigment, 80 cm x 22 cm x 20 cm (Photo: Dan Reisner )
Crown, bronze, 36 cm x 22 cm x 13 cm (Photo: Dan Reisner )
George Floyd, bronze, 30 cm x 48 cm x 43 cm (Photo: Ron Kedmi )
Artist Statement
My work is focused on understanding and reflecting on psychological experiences that affect individuals and our wider society. I am interested in creating in my work an impetus for change through expressive embodiment.
I have made many large-scale, public-realm commissions in Europe, Israel, and the United States. My sculptures in bronze, stone, and other materials are sympathetic to their environment, whether that be a conceptual connection to the site or an integration of natural and created forms in parkland or urban space, influenced by studies of French gardens while I was staying at the Cité des Arts Paris. One of my works in bronze, Outer Limits (2020), in rural upstate New York, rests in harmony with its leafy environment, autumn leaves mirroring the sculpture’s patination.
Personally affected by post-traumatic stress disorder, a result of service as a combat paramedic in Lebanon in the 1980s, I have developed proactive, creative processes that embrace and build from reflection on difficult events. I have used these techniques to work with other artists and companies.
The pain of individual and collective trauma is a recurring theme in both my figurative and abstract works. A significant recent project is my emotional and monumental response to the global sense of emergency following police violence that resulted in the death in 2020 of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. [See last image above.]
Since 2000, I have worked on a series of bronze sculptures that has become a sculptural diary, representing inner life, exposing the evolutionary progression of concerns of one person. This group of works shows bodies with gestural hands for heads; opposing figures merging as an impossible and conflicted hybrid, titled Equal Force; and a standing man graced with a head that has unfurled to be a large bloom or shell of cerebral openness, an Epiphany [see image above]. Another work carries a fragment of a body on its back, a reminder that we cannot escape the ongoing emotional impact of losses and regrets within our personal lives. Each work, small in scale but full of the experience of pain, contributes to an expansive representation of a world of multiple creations from our most inner places to the outer realm of art.
About the Artist
A sculptor and multidisciplinary artist, Dan Reisner specializes in outdoor sculpture in urban public and private spaces.
Dan Reisner has created more than 15 permanent sculptures in Israel and around the world. His sculptures are visually striking and space-conscious, merging aesthetics with modern sensibilities.
Dan Reisner’s style is characterized by a deep awareness of the importance of space as a design element. He conceives his sculptures with the goal of adding value, beauty, and personality to each sculpture’s particular environment.
Work by Dan Reisner has been exhibited in major Israeli museums and galleries, among them the Herzliya Art Museum, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and the Tel Aviv Museum, and can be found in both public and private collections. His public works include Outer Limits (2019) in upstate New York, United States; The Buddha of the Sacks (2008), in Lutz Ackermann Sculpture Garden in Nebringen, Germany; and Time-Memory Wall (2005) at Ironi-Alef High School in Tel Aviv.
Dan Reisner has fulfilled artist residencies in Germany and France and, in addition to several grants, he has been awarded a Creative Arts Award by the Israeli Ministry of Education.
Born in Haifa, Israel, in 1964, Dan Reisner currently lives and works in Tel Aviv.
“Creating Art to Inspire Change: Interview with Dan Reisner“, DailyArt Magazine, February 16, 2021
“One-Minute Look at George Floyd” on YouTube
“Dan Reisner Talks About George Floyd” on YouTube
Leave a Reply