Ori Gersht : History Repeating

Ori Gersht's artistic practice bridges a history that is full of traumas, whether it is the scars left on the sunlit yet war-torn buildings in Sarajevo, the white noise of his train journey to Auschwitz, or the clearing of trees in a forest that once stood witness to mass murder in the Ukraine.

The first comprehensive survey of the photographs, films, and videos of Ori Gersht, this richly illustrated book presents the best of Gersht's achingly beautiful work and explores how he intertwines spectacles of painterly and narrative imagery with personal and collective memory, metaphysical journeys, contextualized spaces, and the history of art and photography. Pushing the camera to the limits of what it can record, Gersht engages an aesthetic that reflects both a highly researched and instinctive approach to his chosen media. Be it the scars left on the sunlit yet war-torn interiors of buildings in Sarajevo, the white noise of a modern-day train journey to Auschwitz, or the clearing of trees in a forest that once stood witness to mass murder in the Ukraine, Gersht's vision bridges a history that is full of violent horror and a world of emergent, transcendent beauty.

Ori Gersht was born in Israel in 1967 and is currently based in London. A conduit between the past and present, his large-scale photographs and videos wed old masters to new technologies, quoting from such sources as Spanish and Dutch still- life painting and the Hudson River Valley School. Gersht's interest in history also goes beyond the visual arts, encompassing the political history that has shaped his personal identity and that of all of us scarred by violence in our contemporary world. His work has been acquired and commissioned by major art institutions such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, London, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.