FOR AN ARTIST, FINDING THE ENTRY POINT to a canvas can be the most confounding part of the creative process. Tomer Aluf, a 35-year-old Israeli who has lived in New York City for the past eight years, uses fictional narratives in which he is the protagonist as his doorway. Like an armchair Gauguin, his imaginary expeditions become fodder for his paintings.
“There’s something romantic about being alone in a studio, but in the end, you’re just alone. And you have to find ways to amuse yourself. It’s almost like masturbating, you search for a moment and you try to have fun with it,” says Aluf. Once inside the narrative and the canvas, he’s free to run with it, rebel against it, comment upon it, or whatever he sees fit. “The narrative becomes a structure, a form,” he adds.
The resulting work is semi-abstract, semi-figurative, with portions of the canvas worked out in a very painterly way, and other portions intentionally left unexplored and primitive. The juxtaposition is an expression of Aluf’s struggle with the legacy of great-artists-gone-by, and his questioning of what exactly qualifies a painting as a masterpiece. The raw parts of his canvas are about “not believing you can make a masterpiece because a masterpiece needs to be fully developed,” he says.
Continuing the theme of carving out a place for himself amongst the masters, a recent series is based on the fanciful premise of Aluf touring Morocco with Matisse. “I’m taking a trip with a successful artist who is dead,” says Aluf, a lanky fellow with an easy-going, curious demeanor. “The idea started when I went to the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. I had been painting palm trees on fire, with the pyromaniac masturbating.” But Aluf wasn’t satisfied with the look of his palm trees. “Then, I saw this painting by Matisse of palm trees, and he really knew how to paint a palm tree!” That inspired Aluf to weave a scenario that explores the idea of what it means to be a successful painter, and the idea of learning from a master. “There is something ironic there, too,” he adds.
What Aluf terms as irony comes across more like a sense of playfulness, whether it’s a girl with a strap-on staring at the viewer, or an oddly placed chicken in the midst of what seem to be body parts (executed in a style that’s equal parts Francis Bacon and Philip Guston). His paintings suggest someone who is serious about painting but at the same time does not take himself too seriously.
Aluf spends three to five days a week in the studio, pushing paint for eight to ten hours a stint. “I usually go in [the studio] around 10 a.m., and then it takes two hours to start doing something.” He also teaches art at Rutgers University and runs Soloway, a gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with three partners. Instead of viewing these endeavors as nuisances that take him away from his studio, he sees all of it as part of establishing a life in the arts.
“You make a painting and it signifies who you are,” he says. “I thought of the gallery as another representation of me. It’s another experience I can have that will add to my life as an artist. When you paint, it’s for you. When you have a gallery, it’s about other people. Even if you don’t love the work, you can still give them a chance. It’s also a great way to meet people.”
Earlier this year, Aluf took off for a real-life adventure: two months in Varanasi, the oldest city in India and by many accounts, the most intense, both in terms of poverty and spirituality. Whether or not the experience will supplant the fictional narratives in his work is unclear. He only recently returned, and is still digesting. “I want to see how it comes out in my work before framing it into words,” he says, adding, “India is crazy, like tripping on acid!”