Moon and Boats
2018
This book was created during 2017-18 with intensive and daily drawing after watching an article about rescuing refugee boats in the Mediterranean. The paintings were made as a response to the extreme living conditions of refugees and survivors across the ocean. In a quasi-impressionist painting, whose subject is the sea and the surface of the water, in the language of painting, brushstrokes, monochrome and spots of color, in shades of blue and dark blue, a series of orange spots flash: life belts. side of a boat. Refugees drowning, or survivors in the heart of the ocean. Bieber examines the durability of a classic modernist genre against an extreme reality and a threat to human life. Can the danger, the anxiety, the condition of survival that depends on containment - shine through the refraction of the moonlight on the surface of the water, in the style of Monet's "Moonlight"? As you flip through the artist's book, the painting becomes more and more abstract, the blue ocean and the dark space cover everything, but a tiny flash of orange/red color reports the catastrophe, as well as, to the same extent, the indifference, the ignoring and the forgetting" (Tali Tamir, 2018 ).
- Copies: 1
- Pages: 46
- Type of binding: Hardcover
- Dimensions (cm): 23x30
- Publication: Independent
- Place of publication: Tel Aviv
- Book photography: Leafing Magazine
Michal Biber (born in Tel Aviv, 1964) is an Israeli painter and drawing instructor living and working in Tel Aviv–Jaffa. She holds a BFA from the Fine Arts Department at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design (1984–1988), studied at Rietveld in Amsterdam in 1987, and later pursued figurative drawing and painting at the Hatahana Studio in Tel Aviv (2005–2008).
She completed an M.A. in the Interdisciplinary Arts Program at Tel Aviv University (2017–2021) and earned a teaching certificate in art from the Midrasha School of Art, Beit Berl College (2016–2017). Biber’s painting moves between abstraction and figuration, combining a deep affinity for European painting traditions with an imaginative, intuitive approach to image-making. Her work is shaped by ongoing searching, observation, and chance, balancing oil‑based observational painting with more spontaneous, reflective gestures.
She has presented solo exhibitions at the Tel Aviv Artists’ House, Yair Gallery, Maya Gallery, and the Herzliya Artists’ Residence, and has participated in numerous group exhibitions at the Israel Museum, Hansen House, the Mishkan Museum of Art, Ein Harod, P8 Gallery, and Minshar for Art Gallery, and more. Biber teaches drawing and painting at Bezalel, at the Technion’s Humanities Department, and in her private studio in Tel Aviv.
