Ken Goshen

My objective for this work was to choose an object that is burdened with many preconceived meanings and to represent it in such a way that new meanings may arise. I chose to work with challah bread because it carries substantial historical, sociopolitical, and religious baggage; yet it is ripe for transformation. Bread has a unique and contradictory form: It appears both natural and artificially designed. In seeking to amplify this idiosyncrasy, I drew inspiration from the stories of Genesis, where the natural and the designed are not mutually exclusive; rather, they are one and the same. The earliest paintings in the series attempted to compose visions of challah in ways that obstruct interpretation of the subject while still constructing it as illusionistic form. In more recent additions to this project, my relationship with challah bread matured. I finally trusted my subjects enough to allow them to take on new meanings without obstructing their true identity. The largest and most recent painting in the series is about the ever-present force of attraction that exists in the gap between all entities - from human relationships to the dances of cosmic bodies.