Interview with Yishay Hogesta
Yishay Hogesta (b. 1990) is an Israeli acrylic painter living and working in Tel Aviv. Hogesta attended the Minshar School of Art to study Art and Film and has adapted his cinematographic education to his current abstract format, developing canvases as individual journeys and taking inspiration from immediate feelings and internal sensitivities. Hogesta spoke to Alison Poon about developing his practice, methodologies of painting and creating personal connections through art. Alison is a London-based artist, writer, and critic looking at how different cultural interactions permeate through art.
Alison: Your formal education is in film, but now we see painting as your primary medium. Could you talk a little bit about what drew you to become an artist and to choose painting as your focus?
Yishay: During my film studies I always looked for a sense of directness and immediacy, I tried pushing my films into that direction. It started with me always making my films by myself; writing the script, directing, filming, editing, and always using just one actor. I found that how I thought about the process was very much connected to the content. I was doing more abstract films and found myself more focused on the visual side than the story telling. My scripts always started from certain visual ideas and the whole script was built around this visual. I really didn’t care about the story part, I kind of forced myself to write it because it’s a film, after all. The parts I really enjoyed were either making the props for the film or editing the sound effects. Slowly, I was drawn more and more into painting and really found myself in the medium. I love how it’s so immediate, I don’t need anyone besides myself to start a painting. In the end, I think it’s very much connected to how I experience art. Whenever watching a movie, I always find myself overthinking and busy trying to understand the film and with abstract paintings a lot of times you just feel it.
“There’s a certain sense I feel while painting that “something needs to happen now or it won’t happen.””
Alison: How do you think this feeling translates to the audience’s experience of your work?
Yishay: I believe that when you experience a painting and you find beauty in it, or the painting does something to you. There is a direct connection there between the artist and the audience because I think it means the viewer can feel and connect to the sensitivities and decisions the artist has made and his inner world which is very hard to put in words, and the viewer has found himself in this abstract experience and maybe learned something about himself. I want to believe that when people experience my paintings and enjoy them, they feel this connection with me and hopefully they will find themselves aspects I’m dealing with in my work.
Alison: What are your main sources of inspiration?
Yishay: I think it’s pretty much the process itself. While painting, I understand certain sensitivities that I feel in the painting, whether it’s certain gestures that feel more “right,” it can also be a certain colour combination, or it can be how this line feels on that specific texture. Figuring out those sensitivities is what inspires me.
Alison: Your artwork has a wonderful spontaneity about it, it appears gestural but also carefully considered. How do you start a painting? Are there any preliminary sketches or is your practice more process led?
Yishay: My practice is very much process led. I don’t do sketches, it almost always starts with a specific gesture I have in mind, it can be a brush stroke in a certain shape or a specific colour I want to try and it just goes from there. I work pretty fast and I often apply the colour using my hands or some sticks that are laying around my studio. There’s a certain sense I feel while painting that “something needs to happen now or it won’t happen.” So, let’s say I feel a certain gesture needs to happen in the painting, it’s much more immediate to just use my hands or this stick instead of using the brush.
Alison: You completed military service in Israel before turning to the arts. Do you relate the physicality and immediacy to your paintings to that more regimented time?
Yishay: Yes, I served as a combat soldier and I think I was very connected to the immediacy and physicality this place has put me through, it’s something that really stayed with me and for sure. I find it in my work, my body is very present in the process and those other aspects in my work started during my service.
Alison: Your work regularly features black and white on a neutral background. How do you choose the colours in a work?
Yishay: I love working with raw canvases, I feel like it’s very much connected to the immediate aspect of my paintings. The fact I reveal the rawness of the material is like a way for me to point out that it’s only a bunch of colours on canvas stretched over a wooden frame, nothing more than that, you see everything, there are no filters between the viewer and the work. I always try to avoid a colour scheme that I find easy for me to work with. I am always trying to push myself towards an interesting and exciting colour scheme and to surprise myself. Sometimes, I have certain colour in mind which I want to try out and see where it goes from there.
Alison: How do you decide when a painting is finished?
Yishay: For me I just feel that there is nothing left for me to add when I look at the painting, that it’s well balanced and everything that needs to be there is there. Or sometimes there’s stuff I don’t like in the work but I don’t know how to deal with them, so it means the painting is not good and I’m probably going to throw it away.
Alison: How has Covid-19 impacted the way you are working and exhibiting?
Yishay: It first started with an exhibition cancellation and other plans that got postponed to an unknown date. After the initial disappointments I started painting intensively during quarantine, my studio is at my house so I had no problems with the restrictions and I could really dive into the process and made this body of work which I’m very happy with. Also, a lot of other surprising opportunities came up that were related to the Covid-19 situation, so I guess it was a unique experience.
