Dina Shenhav / Soft

Roy Brand

Dina Shenhav creates art from everyday and inexpensive materials – yellow sponge, polycarbonate sheets, and colorful plastic beads. Despite their accessible nature, the artist's magical touch and meticulous attention grant these materials qualities of innocence and softness.

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In her current  exhibition, foam sculptures and mosaics reinterpret iconic themes like The Last Supper and The Binding of Isaac, infusing these narratives with an unexpected material fragility. The softness of foam contrasts with the weight of the stories they depict, adding layers of vulnerability and ephemerality to these moments of sacrifice and ritual.

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Similarly, paintings of thorns on plastic surfaces bridge sharpness with the smooth, synthetic quality of their base. The thorns evoke pain and resilience, yet their depiction on plastic—a material of modernity and disposability—questions permanence and the tension between natural and artificial.

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This exploration of softness extends into narrative art forms, drawing parallels to folktales and children's stories where horror is both tempting and threatening. These tales, often woven with a veneer of innocence, confront darker themes—think of the candy-coated menace of Hansel and Gretel or the enchanting but deadly allure of the Pied Piper. Such narratives play with contrasts, balancing danger with beauty, much like the softness of foam or plastic contrasts with the gravity of the themes they depict. In both visual and narrative art, this duality captures the human experience's layered complexity, drawing audiences into a space where comfort and unease coexist.