The gentle soldiers by Adi Nes
I hope we never have the tendency to start speaking about somebody by pointing our fingers on his/her sexuality; but this time the precision worths for the Israeli photographer Adi Nes, openly a gay man.
He was born in Kiryat Gat, Israel, in 1996, from Iranian parents.
Nes' early work has been characterized as subverting the stereotype of the masculine Israeli man by complexly explorating homoeroticism and portraying sleeping, vulnerable figures.
Autobiography is close to be obvious, as he lived and still does, in a country in conflict.
Besides the Soldiers series, in most of Nes' production the sexual tension is ever-present, as in the Biblical series in which the spectator can breathe his interest for the italian Renaissance and Barocco paintures, as in his version of the leonardesque "Last supper", one of his iconical artworks. Even if in "Soldiers" there is no sign of violence, there it comes in the serie "Boys" or "Prisonners" (first published in the fashion magazine Vogue Hommes International).
Untitled (Last Supper), 1999 (courtesy of the net)
Untitled (Cain and Abel), 2004 (Courtesy Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv)
Untitled, 2003 (courtesy of the net)
“My staged photographs are oversized and often recall well-known scenes from Art History and Western Civilization combined with personal experiences based on my life as a gay youth growing up in a small town on the periphery of Israeli society.” says Nes in an interview at the Israeli Center in San Francisco
Saul & Samuel, 2007 (courtesy of the net)
Untitled, 1996 (courtesy of the net)
He has had solo shows at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco; the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. His work is in many public collections including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Canada; The Jewish Museum, New York; the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel and The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
Auctions results According to the website Artprice.com, from 2000, Nes' artworks worth 1 million $, with a range of 33 sold photography, mst of them in the States. His best year was 2013, in which he was 2490° in the ranking of the market with a value of 343K $, while in 2018, his work is not considerated.
Concerning his "Last supper", a print had been sold at auction in Sotheby's for $102,000 in 2005,and another for $264,000 in 2007.
For selected artworks currently on sale, Adi Nes is represented by
Current public exhibitions:
Parking on Pavement Jack Shainman, The School, KINDERHOOK | NEW YORK | USA NOVEMBER 17, 2018-MARCH 02, 2019
Carry that Weight The Jerusalem Artists' House, JERUSALEM | ISRAEL DEC 22,2018 - MAR 09,2019