Review by Uzi Zur (February 07, 2014)

Published in Haaretz, Culture and Literature, "Closing One Eye".

It is pure pleasure to see how Michal Bachi evolves from exhibition to exhibition in the niche she has carved out for herself. Bachi arrives in this exhibition for full maturity, out of evolution and loyalty to her inner voice. Her works are like litmus paper, reflections of the shadows and lights of her own life and the people close to her. They also transform the secrets of her Tel Aviv family into stories and fairy tales that have something almost Nordic.

There is a measured dose of the figurative in her works that touches the abstract, longing for it, meeting with the sensual, the forbidden and the suffocating. Bachi, who creates minor art, is one of the extraordinary artists of local art. Her works are surrounded by an aura of alienation, distance and otherness.

Bachi is one of the most important artists of local art, surrounded by an aura of alienation, distance and otherness. Each of her works is a miniature world, a kind of riddle of emotions, anxieties, passions and thoughts encoded behind aesthetics of great plastic beauty. In her art there is a hint of the echoes of both the outside world, and of grim illustration and storytelling.

The name of the exhibition, "The Incubator and Ventilator", contains the wonder of it: the birth of something new wrapped in some almost intangible nostalgia.


* The translation is a summary of the written text in Hebrew