EP10: Ofer Grunwald - The Contemporary Artist
Ofer Grunwald is living and working in Brussels and Jerusalem and is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist, working mainly in mixed-media installation and figurative sculpture. His work is informed by his background as a world-leading bonsai artist, and driven by a fascination with processes (whether personal, social, cultural, technical, or artistic) and the tension between the dynamic and the seemingly static. In this episode we explore the crossover in Ofers sculptural figurative work and his bonsai creations. His involvement with the national Bonsai collection in Jerusalem, Israel and his stewardship under Italian bonsai artist Enric Savini. Ofer’s installation pieces, which have become his main practice, emanate from various deeply-ingrained traditions that have served as a formative backdrop for him, personally. These can be cultural traditions, religious traditions, artistic traditions, etc. His work tends to turn a critical, but ultimately compassionate eye on these traditions. By rendering them contemporary and dynamic, Ofer highlights the dissonance between tradition as a static object, and the dynamics of the society that practices that tradition.