Encountering the work of Amili Gelbman in its entirety is like walking down an unfamiliar street—new, unknown—where I allow the smells, the clamor of sounds, and the stream of sights to wash over me all at once. At this early stage, what matters most is openness, curiosity, and attentive listening to that elusive “street-feeling” before I even begin to discern the details.
So it is with Amili’s paintings. A visceral sense of dread. Something powerful that floods the senses and jolts the perceived subject. Perhaps it is a personal terror rising from the depths, and I am being offered a sliver of communication with the artist. Or perhaps it’s a reaction to something external—one that stirs a collective consciousness shared by both artist and viewer.
Once that initial impression has been given its space, I can begin to observe more closely. Like walking through that unfamiliar street—suddenly noticing the buildings: are they old? Or the shops: are they small and dim?
Here, the question arises: why dread?
Then, in the second stage, attention sharpens and scans—wide-open eyes, shades of red and black, emaciated figures, faces obscured, prison-like imagery such as bars. While the eyes search for clues, the mind enters a third stage—seeing complexity. This is not dread for its own sake.
At the heart of it, the street begins to fill with contradictions—old and new, intimate and alien—existing side by side within the same space.
Amili’s street becomes, for me, rich. Contradictions nourish my vessel of impressions. A woman. A woman standing before a field of golden wheat—seemingly innocent—but beyond it, black hills. No, it is not night. The field is lit. Yet the dark hills breathe in the same sentence.
A work with figures cocooned in a kind of burrow. The figures wear light-colored clothing—perhaps hints of belts or scarves—but their posture evokes the Muselmänner of the Holocaust. Contradiction at its sharpest.
In another piece, the figures seem whole—yet utterly gaunt, trapped in a white mist cocoon. So many questions, and a sense of an unresolved riddle.
In the fourth piece comes, for me, the deepest contradiction. I am the one receiving the images as a gift from the artist’s soul. The ginger-haired head becomes part of a vast collective that has been weeping for a year. Yet this tiny figure is dressed in sky blue—blue that suggests optimism, perhaps. But from another angle, that same blue feels angelic, ethereal... no longer of this world.
The dissonances that unfold through engaging with the works are part of the experience of dread. But it is a complex dread. This street sits within the psyche, as opposites that coexist simultaneously. What we call... life.
