THUS FAR

THUS FAR

Amir Tomashov

Curator: Hadas Glazer

In a conversation between Job and God, the Creator explains that he alone set the boundaries of the ocean: “Thus far shall you come and no farther” (Job 38:11). The phrase defines a boundary that is simultaneously abstract, finite, and rigid, a line that must not be crossed and whose transgression could carry catastrophic ramifications.

Amir Tomashov’s practice centers on buildings. By their very essence, buildings are meant to provide stability and permanence, separate the inside from the outside, and establish organization, hierarchy, and meaning in a specific space. However, in his work, the buildings do not offer shelter but rather expose their precarious and fleeting existence. An architect by training, Tomashov explores the world through the language of construction: foundations, bearing wall, section, model, blueprint. In this exhibition, the architectural perspective is forensic in nature, as if the artist wishes to use artistic-clinical tools to investigate the aftermath of the event, the collapse of the home and its boundaries, and the dissolution of meaning and identity together with material destruction.

At the center of the exhibition, we encounter a pile of whitewashed logs, each propping a miniature house. This dream house model has been replicated repeatedly until it has detached from the core of truth, conjuring the question: What is the essence of a house when the structure still stands but no longer offers a sense of safety, boundary, and barrier? Between fantasy and horror, the imagined habitat questions the protection the house is supposed to provide, and how it is perceived in Israel today, as a shape that persists even when its content is depleted.

Large scale works that combine color and drawing on massive wooden panels are mounted on the walls. Purportedly, this is the significant shift: the introduction of color into Tomashov’s characteristically architectural drawings. The color appears as an event, as stains and drips stand out against the realistic meticulousness of his drawings. It does not “color in” the image but serves as a surface on which the drawing takes shape, juxtaposing the Sisyphean drawing with the explosive force of the pictorial event. The disconnect between the figures and the devastation that surrounds them raises questions about the possibility to maintain internal homeostasis in a world tittering on the brink of collapse. It seems that the real shift is not merely material but involves the context within which Tomashov works: The examination of global processes was replaced by a focus on a specific place, time, and life. However, this is not about a personal and emotional confession. The figures remain generic, contained in a world of their own, their glazed eyes staring at nothing while the background hits at what is happening around them.

Tomashov operates within the conceptual artistic lineage of Gordon Matta-Clark and Rachel Whiteread, who examined the juncture in which the home ceases to be a protective casing and becomes a site of exposure, absence, and fragility. This framework informs a new and more sober reflection on the current situation, where the home is no longer a promise but holds the potential of a catastrophe. The exhibition brings together the illusion of stability with a shaky world, exposing the gap between dream and unstable reality. Here, the breakdown is not an exception, but an existential condition.

In this context, the phrase “Thus Far” encapsulates the national psyche after Oct 7 and the tragic three years that followed. These words do not simply imply that “we have reached a breaking point”; they convey a more complex realization: borders that were once seen as fixed and protective have turned out to be permeable and brittle. In a chaotic and threatening world, home and border continue to produce a semblance of order. But precisely because it is an illusion, it is also essential: a form that allows us to withstand reality, even when the promise behind it has been broken. 

 Installation Photography: Youval Hai.

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