Gal Schindler’s paintings present creatures from another world, where colours seem to play with us. Her obsession with painting bodies translates to a peculiar line, encapsulating a never-ending movement, interweaving curves and hair in an undulating, tempting manner. However, what her figures convey is way beyond seduction. Their enchanting way of looking at us raises mysterious voices from old times, evoking witches hunted in the middle ages when they were brought to justice and forced to say that they did not dare to disobey the devil.

Monstrous, yet, somewhat humorous. Rebellious but also soft and gentle. As if these figures were dancing, their bodies reflect the impromptu gestures of the artist herself, moving playfully in front of the canvas. This might be unexpected, when one discovers Schindler grew up surrounded by anatomy books and pictures of human bodies being modified, re-sculptured, rearranged and twisted, all belonging to her orthopaedic surgeon father. Can we say then, that Gal Schindler’s improper brush stroke joins this action of deconstructing and reconstructing the human body ? Undoubtedly, the feminine body; though many of Schindler’s sources of inspiration are male artists, such as Lucien Freud and Willem de Kooning, or photographs such as George Platt Lynes or Herbert List. We can understand nonetheless, that Schindler’s way to unlearn these male gazes on the body, is, as the poet Anne Carson would say [to] look in so quick you see the secret.

The figures floating in oceans of colours are alluding to Schindler’s interest in the realm of the sea, which she considers as an alternative world, somehow resembling outer space, where so much has not yet been reached. Her new show in Sultana gallery is a continuation of the artist's exploration of these deep spaces. After a series of paintings delving into the form of shells as silently resistant objects, Schindler presents here new paintings, revealing the shell’s soul, the pearl. As pearls are formed through the gradual accumulation of layers, so too are Schindler's delicate yet disturbing paintings, both divulging to us a noiseless inner truth. Noam Alon