Tomer Hanuka has been a favorite artist of mine for years, now. To this day, he is at the center of one of my fondest memories. I remember a friend of mine, who was living outside of the country at the time, bought me one of his limited edition prints as a gift. It's one of the greatest gifts I've ever received, and a spectacular start to a personal art collection.
I love Hanuka's style of elongating the human figure, and exaggerating the pose. His work brings to mind the word "sinew" for me, because the muscles of all of his characters seem to me to be just on the verge of bursting. When I see the kind of people that he works into his imagery, I can't help but have the oxygen pushed out of my lungs, as if I've just run a marathon and now I'm doubled over and gasping for air with such force that my eyes are about to roll out of my head and down the sidewalk. Bye-bye eyes.
In addition to his figure quality, I also love his line quality. His figures are worked up with such fine lines that indicate a distinct surgical precision. The perfect compliment to that is the way in which he applies color. His color use comes across to me like a foreign language. At times, I can make out what he's doing, but then he hits these stints of verbose subtlety that befuddle my mind and require a second and third look. It's rare that I can stair straight at something and still not know what I'm looking at, but Tomer Hanuka manages the illusion, somehow.
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