home
Chameleons In
the late 1980’s David Frumer created a body of work around the image of the
chameleon. “The chameleon is an animal who knows how to survive, to blend in, to adapt. It is a very positive thing. It walks very slow, it eats only flies, anybody can catch and eat it, but it survives. The dinosaurs folded but it survived.” In a review in Davar, Talia Rappaport commented: “David Frumer surprises us with paintings that are much more painterly. Aside from the chameleon which functions here as the color-changing animal that adapts to his environment, his show includes two ‘cornerstones,’ as Frumer puts it: the depiction of the Pythagorean Theorem and of related geometric forms. The Pythagorean Triangle will always keep its basic form. For Frumer it is a symbol of logic and clarity. Its form is easy to use and enables the development geometric forms on every angle, an endless chain that always preserves its basic characteristics; in that, it has a certain parallel with the chameleon which changes colors but always keeps its form. A great deal of energy emanates from these pictures… The painterly quality reaches it apex in four deep blue paintings that shine from a mysterious aura within. Layers of blue paint create an abstract surface from within which the forms seem to emerge.” (March 18, 1988)
Amnon Barzel, the noted Israeli critic, wrote in a personal letter to Frumer: “This is your most mature exhibition. Deep and even tormented. The brainwaves and the crossed electronic wires converge with our primal naivety and self-pity. As abandoned and powerless creatures, man and chameleon both try to make do and to conform but are in the end soft beasts falling apart from fear and incomprehension in the face of all-encompassing technological advances. The computer games will not help us forget the fear--The broken apart reality without a redeeming plan. Only our physical pose like a fossilized chameleon, Like the fossilized dinosaurs in the Carbon Epoch is left sunken in the electronic swamp. You are a great mind, an exicting artist.” (April, 1998)
|