2024 Israel Makov Prize Exhibition for a Promising Artist

Yuval Naor is the recipient of the The Israel Makov Most Promising Artist Award 2024, which grants a financial reward and a solo exhibition at Freshpaint Art & Design Fair.

In the exhibition “Immeasurably Small and Infinitely Vast”, Naor presents a new body of work through which he explores notions of foreignness from a local perspective and vice versa, surgically deconstructing simple images until they challenge the viewer into surrealism. In the video work “Collective Bonfire”, Naor halts on a familiar image and compels us to suspect it. The pattern of the window grating, the filtered color behind frosted glass, the nearly motionless crow – everything seems familiar, almost clichéd. But something lurks beneath the surface, casting doubt.

Naor operates like a poltergeist*. Chairs fly, the clock runs backward, the foliage is dense and secretive, the crow is white. These works seduce with their familiarity, then mislead and disorient. The image is easily recognizable, the eye rests on it calmly, until a moment of pause reveals a physical disruption, destabilizing, shaking the ground beneath. Through a process of abstraction and distillation, questions arise about place and belonging. With Naor, clichés are true, but he deliberately distorts them, prompting broader questions about authenticity in general, and about the credibility of the familiar in particular. His photographic manipulations are laid bare, unapologetic - and still, like a cinematic loop, deeply moving. Like an anthem, like a cooking show, like an image from outer space.

In an era where truth is elusive, or where truth is a product, a promise, entirely subjective, Nao’s works seek out an authentic and unconditioned moment: to understand it, to identify with it, to know it well, and to let it transform into something new.


*A poltergeist (also called a frightener, prankster, or trickster) is a supernatural entity in folklore, associated with physical disturbances such as loud noises, moving objects, and the manipulation or destruction of material things.

Prize Committee: Shulamit Nuss, Revital Ben Asher-Peretz
Curator: Raz Shapira