Abstract and large scale: Lior Modan comes home to Israel
- (opens in new tab)
- (opens in new tab)
- (opens in new tab)
- Sign up to our newsletter Newsletter

Tel Avivian by birth, and breeding, Lior Modan lives and works in New York City. With a new solo show, 'Wild Rice', he's coming home for his first comprehensive showing in Israel, at Tel Aviv's ex-tahini factory-turned-gallery Contemporary by Golconda.
'As a contemporary artist who is also an immigrant, I am always hovering over a place of non-belonging like an astronaut', said Modan. In this latest show, the works, enigmatic and surprising, find their own worthy sense of place as large-scale deliveries. Often hard to define, the work, according to Modan, is a 'Compost Concert' – presenting various attempts to form a bridge between the image and the painted surface. 'I feel that the works share a physical instability that keep them morphing as you spend more time with them,' he explains.
In Sweat the W, a frozen, ginger mattress leaves its mark inside a rosy, summery painting. Lugete Veneres poses a quote from Ezra Pound’s Hellenistic poetry on canvas with a sample of families of penguins, Marc Jacobs design, torches and even pipes. As for Blue Velvet, dancers revolve over the artist’s face with a surprising mountain view. 'I appreciate,' Modan explains, 'that odd characteristic of artworks constantly changing in their search for a new audience.'
’Wild Rice’ opens later this month at Contemporary by Golconda - an atmospheric, converted tahini factory. Pictured: Blue Velvet, 2015
The works share a physical instability that reflects the artist’s astronaut-like feelings of ’non-belonging’. Pictured: Domestic Prints, 2013
Lugete Veneres (Cry Cupids), takes its name from a number of different poems, including ’Ladies’ by Ezra Pound and Lord Byron’s ’Translation from Catullus: Lugete Veneres Cupidinesque’
The works express the quality of searching for an audience and a home, as nodded towards in this piece, No Forgiveness For the Bad Detective, 2015
INFORMATION
’Wild Rice’ is on view from 24 December. For more information, visit Contemporary by Golconda’s website (opens in new tab)
ADDRESS
Contemporary by Golconda
Herzl Sreet 117
Tel Aviv-Yafo, 66555
VIEW GOOGLE MAPS (opens in new tab)
Daniel Scheffler is a storyteller for The New York Times and others. He has a travel podcast with iHeart Media called Everywhere (opens in new tab) and a Substack newsletter, Withoutmaps (opens in new tab), where he shares all his wild ways. He lives in New York with his husband and their pup.
-
The best London art exhibitions: a guide for March 2023
Your guide to the best London art exhibitions, and those around the UK in March 2023, as chosen by the Wallpaper* arts desk
By Harriet Lloyd Smith • Published
-
Craig Green on his ‘decorated men’ and those hand-moulded leather accessories
‘They are almost like a relic,’ says British designer Craig Green of the hand-moulded leather objects that appeared as part of his S/S 2023 collection, a musing on functionality and decoration
By Jack Moss • Published
-
Wadi AlFann, AlUla’s new land art destination, is stirring creativity in the desert
Wadi AlFann – Saudi Arabia’s Valley of the Arts – hints at the scale of its ambition with an event in the desert for curators, artists and cultural leaders ahead of the completion of its site and first five artworks
By Simon Mills • Published