ABOUT

Arik Weiss was born in Montreal, Canada in 1974. Currently resides in Tel Aviv, Israel. Weiss works predominantly in the medium of collage and video. He has completed an MFA at the Pratt institute in NYC and a BFA at the Camera Obscura school of art in Tel Aviv.

As a visual artist his interests vary from commercial broadcast and motion graphics design projects to gallery exhibitions, primarily of collage and video installations.

STATEMENT

I practice my art as a scientist. I feel like a spectator, looking at the world as if it were in a petri dish, building my utopian spaces through the process of deconstructing an existing representation of social habitats.

I work in the media of collage and video. The subjects I choose to work with are related to social degeneration. For example, in the ‘Pools’ collage series, I use old americana post cards from the 1950’s and replace the interior of the pools with different materials. The surface covers the social decay. The ‘Ramon’ collage series was photographed in Mitzpe Ramon, a remote Israeli town, founded in the 1960’s in order to bring prosperity to the desert. I transform the buildings into monuments / memorial statues.

The common theme recurring in my work is the constant human attempt to occupy, whether it’s ideals or places. There is a gap between the initial idea and the way portrayed in reality.

CONTACT

For more information email arik@arik-weiss.com