Bardo

Bardo is an accompanying publication to the exhibition of the same name, presented at Binyamin Gallery, Tel Aviv, in January–February 2024. The Bardo Thodol, the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Living, which in Buddhism accompanies the deceased on their journey toward the next incarnation, serves as a conceptual foundation for Adi T. Hoffman’s exhibition. The book, along with a sketchbook the artist kept while staying beside the sickbed of a close family member, forms the point of departure for the development of the exhibition.

The exhibition raises questions about prolonged states of in-betweenness, the presence of death within life, and the spirit within matter. Each drawing in the sketchbook is an attempt to capture and document a fragment of a moment מתוך a continuous present in the hospital: wheelchairs, medical equipment, and hospital beds are rendered in black charcoal. The works in the exhibition are derivatives and transformations of this act of drawing. In their new incarnation as gallery works, the sketchbook drawings have undergone processes of refinement, editing, planning, and expansion, while retaining their expressive essence.

Through the addition and subtraction of material from the surface of the image, together with bodily references and allusions to vanitas painting, Hoffman invites us to observe and reflect on the passage of time and the shadowy presence of death throughout the different stages of life. This presence is always there—in every object, state, or emotion—suggesting that the present moment itself is but a fragment within ongoing processes of life and death.