About: Adi Nes
Adi Nes was born in 1966 in Kiryat Gat, he currently lives and works in Tel Aviv. Nes got his BFA in 1992 in the photography department at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem.
His artistic work involves photography of well-staged scenes. Through his work he researches matters of masculinity, homosexuality and Israeli identity. His artwork is influenced by history, art history and philosophy. In his art creating process he directs actors, places them in a scene and takes a picture.
His most famous artwork "The Last Supper", describes soldiers sitting in a composition similar to the one in Leonardo Da Vinci's celebrated painting also titled "The Last Supper". Nes uses Da Vinci's composition which creates a sense of depth and draws the viewer's eye to the main character sitting at the center of the photograph. This photograph is one out of a series of photos titled "Soldiers" that he created in the years 1994-2000. In 2013 one of the five copies of the photograph was sold at public auction for $ 377,000, the most expensive price ever paid for a contemporary Israeli artist's work.
Nes created additional series in different subjects, for example, in 2007 he created a series called "Biblical Stories". In the series he connected between the bible stories and the social Israeli reality. He showed the stories by representing poverty and underprivileged people in society. In 2012 Nes created another series titled "The Village". The series represented an Israeli kibbutz or a village and depicts the people in it. As in the rest of his work, in the series he dealt with the Israeli identity and the subject of masculinity in a local context. His artwork has many references and inspirations from art history and it is visible in his photography.
Nes has won numerous grants and awards for his artistic work, among them The Nathan Gottesdiener Foundation Israeli Art Prize on behalf of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2002), A chosen artist award of the Israel Cultural Excellence Foundation (2005) and the Culture & Sport Minister's Prize for Artists in the Visual Arts (2013).
Nes has participated in solo and group exhibitions in international galleries and museums. Today, he is represented by leading galleries in New York and Paris.
