Adi Nes: Photographs

Adi Nes makes staged photographs that use the lenses of art history and mythology to transform everyday life in his native Israel. Set in actual locations, Nes' photographs depict commonplace subjects: soldiers on military exercises, boys in rough-edged housing projects, women and children enacting street dramas. His compositions, however, are inspired by stories of Biblical heroes like Nimrod and ancient Greek and Roman gods like Adonis and Dionysus, as well as masterpieces of Renaissance art such as da Vinci's Last Supper fresco and Caravaggio's dramatically lighted paintings. Famous photographs from the founding of Israel, including as the raising of the "Ink Flag" over the city of Eilat and the capture of the Suez canal also are restaged and reinterpreted in Nes' work. Mixing past and present, fact and fiction, and aesthetic play and social commentary, Nes' images allow him to look for timeless truths in his life as a gay man and an Israeli. Charged with slyly audacious symbolism, theatricality, and sexuality Nes' constructed reality both surprises and informs.

Adi Nes: Photographs is made possible by contributions from Joyce and Ted Strauss and by the Garfield Family Foundation. Additional support comes from the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, and the California Arts Council.