Shahar Sivan works like a crazy butcher, aggressively slicing his material, revealing its raw condition, studying its structure and reducing it to its basic construction. His works look like an accumulation of rough scars, evidence of a forceful, even violent approach to the material.

His figures lack specification, their facial features and body shapes are general and impersonal. A review of Sivan's work in different media reveals that on the technical level, this stylistic approach stems from a drawing based study in line. However the transition to wood cutting (in two and three dimensions) gives the impression there's something more to it. The structural lines of the figure seem to charge in greater emotional intensity, since the material calls for greater physical pressure.
It may be said that in the combination of abstract figurativeness (which doesn't seek to reliably portray the figure) and expressive style, the figure becomes insignificant, supposedly giving the artist an excuse to express his own temperament. That his work may be interpreted as traces of emotional outbursts in the manner of Jackson Pollock and Action Art. It is evident that Sivan's demeanor comes through vividly in his works; however the junction in which he departs from Pollock, is the humanistic outlook through which he perceives the world. His outlook believes in a hierarchical structure of the art work, in its logical foundation and in a figurative anchor for the viewer's identification.


Nogah Davidson