2021, installation view, Bar-David Museum of Art and Judaica, Kibbutz Bar'am, Israel. Photo: Dror Miler

In this exhibition, entitled “Green Has Gone to War,” Fluman presents a brand new body of works that continues her investigation of the boundaries between representation and source, focusing on the transition from the concrete to the abstract. In this new chapter of her practice, the medium of painting – its origins, history and legacy – plays a pivotal role. For this exhibition the artist chose to avoid treating images as they are; in other words, “a helmet is not a helmet,” (echoing René Magritte’s 1929 The Treachery of Images) but rather a surreal flower that is about to open; a 3D replica of a gecko, so hyper-realistic it actually looks completely artificial; a drawing illustrating a fabric motif has been sampled and turned into pure abstraction.

Repetition is also a crucial element in the exhibition. Three dusty mirrors ‘reflect’ a space haunted by memories that cannot be perceived as a whole, but only as fragments of a dreamful setting that has turned into a nightmare – the end of a golden age and the dawn of a new dark beginning. A detail of a chandelier, with light bulbs and crystal prisms, and a clock that stopped working appear through the mirroring surfaces covered by smeared dust. Created in a 3D modeling software, following images found online, these works seem to put into question the very essence of depiction while becoming windows to an unspeakable past that cannot be forgotten, despite all the efforts.

The title of the exhibition is also a fragment, this time of a longer sentence connected to the color of a pack of cigarettes, echoing Fluman’s interest in boxes and containers as ‘vehicles’ of visual, social, cultural, and historical signs. In a famous advertising campaign that used the slogan “Lucky Strike Green has gone to war,” the tobacco company claimed that the change of color of its pack, from green – the guiding color of Fluman’s exhibition display – to white, was made because the copper used in the green color was needed for World War II.

Although the white package was actually introduced to modernize the label and to increase the appeal of the package among female smokers, the official reason – and related campaign – became a convenient way to make the product more marketable while appearing patriotic at the same time.

“Adi Fluman: Green Has Gone to War” is curated by Nicola Trezzi and it follows “Adi Fluman: Souvenir d’amitié,” presented at CCA Tel Aviv and “Adi Fluman: Pandora’s Box,” presented at the Negev Museum of Art in Be'er Sheva. This collaboration, and its related publication Adi Fluman: Talismans, are supported by Outset Contemporary Art Fund and Dvir Gallery Tel Aviv / Brussels.