Wall Circles | Curator: Prof. Dor Guez

MFA Graduate Exhibition, Bezalel, Tel-Aviv

5.5.25 – 31.5.25

---

---

---

Wall Circles presents a series of paintings by Yishay Hogesta that draw from the visual residue of public space. Torn posters, construction signage, industrial paint, political stickers, and layered repairs appear as recurring formal references, not as motifs to be depicted, but as material and structural sources for the works themselves.

Hogesta’s paintings, which he refers to as Mechanisms, are composed through the interaction of oil paint, industrial oil, spray paint, and lacquer These incompatible substances are allowed to resist, bleed into, and repel one another, generating surfaces shaped as much by physical processes as by compositional decisions. The resulting forms remain suspended between abstraction and recognition, evoking urban surfaces without reproducing them directly.

Across the series, layered accumulations suggest systems in a state of continual revision, where traces of action overwrite one another and stability remains provisional. At moments, these formations appear almost semi-sentient, as if autonomous presences emerging from material conflict. Grids soften into irregular topographies, paint gathers and separates, and surfaces oscillate between rigidity and fluidity.

The installation emphasizes the physical status of the paintings as objects within the gallery. Presented in a neutral architectural setting with cold, daylight-toned lighting, the works do not propose an immersive environment or narrative space. Instead, they assert themselves as material bodies that share the room with walls, floor, and viewer, subtly altering the perception of the surrounding architecture.

Together, the paintings articulate a visual language shaped by accumulation, friction, and contingency, offering a condensed encounter with the dynamics that structure contemporary urban surfaces.