"Refugees" Collage

Ricardo Lapin is a plastic artist based in Israel. He was born at Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1961. At age 16 he left to Israel at the times of Military "Junta". He began to study oil painting at age 10, and this discipline become a way of life: with more knowledge & experience, it continues till today.

My Artist Statement:

Art is a meeting between the individual and the universal, question marks about the human soul. I believe that the artist must reflect the "Zeitgeist" of the period he works. My own struggles and dilemmas, the culture and environment in which I live are present in every piece of work.
Painting for me is my inmost protected and stable place, like a priceless shelter. Always present, since my early childhood, despite changing situations and realities. A territory that can be built and changed endlessly, a meeting place for memories, fears, desires. Within the creative process everything has existence, without a name or definition, there is place where everything is possible and can be repaired. My work is born mainly from images, the imagery nurtured by experiences, stemming from memories and dreams, mine and from my family.
The artist work examines and describes the existence of man in this world, allows the brave inquiring of actual and local values . Alongside the aesthetic expression, my works seek to examine the limits of justice and freedom, the meaning of life and death in a period of spiritual loss, depression and continuing devaluation of human lives.
Images come to me. As waking up from a dream, I catch them by sketching, drawing them before they escape; after that I articulate them and find new related images, in an associative process. I can perceive that many images have an aroma of oral stories, memories, family legends, secret traumas. Sometimes they arrive from mystery and remain there, even when already painted. The final work is sometimes a kind of unfinished sentence, to be filled in by the public, in many surprising ways, sometimes very far from my associations & ideas during the creative process. It's always magic and truthful for me to realize about the multiple ways of reading my work.