And All the Paintings Will Not Cover

The artist’s book “And All the Paintings Will Not Cover” brings together paintings by Talia Israeli created over the past decade. The book focuses on a painterly process centered on the use of spray paint and working methods that evolved from large-scale wall paintings into techniques applied to smaller surfaces, such as old cabinet shelves.

The book is designed in the spirit of a “knowledge of the land” guidebook, and its landscape paintings were created מתוך observation of early Renaissance painting as well as from 20th-century Israeli geography books. The works have been shown in a variety of contexts and are the result of an intensive and sustained material investigation, which led to the development of a unique pictorial language that engages with print and photography. Many of the works included are wall paintings created in different exhibition configurations and erased at the end of each show—the book serves as their documentation.

The book includes dozens of photographs of works, installation views from exhibitions and projects, and documentation of studio processes. Interwoven throughout are three accompanying texts written in response to the body of work, illuminating the discourse on painting in general and on the artist’s practice from three distinct yet complementary perspectives: conceptual, poetic, and research-based. The conceptual text is written from the perspective of the painter and writer Yair Garbuz; the poetic text by the author Oded Wolkstein; and the theoretical-research text by the architect and curator Einat Gabbay Levy.