Biography

Gabriele Levy (Buenos Aires, 1958 - ) lives and works in Italy.
After a military service in the Sharpshooters (“Bersaglieri”), Levy worked for a year at a wholesaler of gold and diamonds, learning to observe transparent matter stony in a microscope.

In 1980 the artist moved to Israel, where he worked first in Kibbutz Bet Nir with artists Moshe Shek ("Juk"), and C. Kalman, producing clay products, concrete and iron with Shek, while learning the techniques of collage of fabrics by Kalman.

"Taken" also there to the army, Levy finds himself in a war that is not his own, writing a long diary and some short stories about the beautiful and weird close encounters perfectly peaceful he had with the "enemy".
During the tragicomic but traumatic war in Lebanon, Levy starts to transform the empty tank shells, cutting them with a blowtorch to make an umbrella stand, or turn old iron pipes into a bike rack.

In 1983 is the time of plastics, and Levy is a laborer at a factory (ELCAM), where he injects and extrudes plastics, dealing with molds and resins, PVC and polycarbonates, pressures and temperatures, computers and statistical process control.

The idea of a new 3D art is born in this era, where he learned the use of the 3D transformation from negative to positive using casting molds, an idea that he will resume after producing the plaster and silicon molds of the hebrew letters, powerfull tools to reduce the production time of the piece, and obviously its unit cost.

Levy graduated as a technician at the Rupin Plastics Institute, then studied at the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology), undergraduating in 1988 in Industrial Engineering and Management and Computer Sciences Technical Engineering.
In this period he made a lot of jobs:the painter, the sweeper, the night watchman, technical interpreter, the programmer in FORTRAN, the fishman, the collector of apples and citrus fruits, the bartender, the chef, the factory worker, the patent translator.

In 1992 Levy returns to Italy, and the editor Franco Angeli publish his book about materials requirements planning; meanwhile the sculptor begins to produce clay tiles in high relief with a hebrew letter.

Sculptoring an ALEPH in clay

The forms were baked in a more a thousand degrees and then hung on the wall.

In the same years, after the study of the writings of Rav Matitiahu Glazerson, he publish a brief but fascinating book about the secrets of the letters of the hebrew alphabet.
Later still he is studying Kabbalah, the jewish mysticism based on the hebrew letters, lecturing on the subject all around italian cities.

After producing for the synagogue in Turin the first sentence of the Torah, makes on behalf of the Jewish Museum of Casale Monferrato, the entire hebrew alphabet, and accompany each letter of explanation about its meaning.

In the same year he created the first jewish web portal in Italian (www.italya.net ), completing it with mailing lists, forums and a rudimentary but fun social network called the Schola Novissima Leon da Modena.

In 1997, during the Festival of Jewish Culture in Venice, it shows the entrance to the Ghetto dozens of letters made into new materials: glass and iron, cast iron and marble, travertine and concrete.

Since 1992 he produced thousands of hebrew letters made in plaster, concrete, clay or glass, creating shapes and objects, using recycled materials, resins, phosphorus powder, bricks and microprocessors.

In 2001 then it follows a period of photocollages that tell the story of the Jewish people, or of the first attempts of hidden art and art double, from which comes the artwork seen as a dynamic object with which the viewer can interact spatially and temporally.

Then in 2003 the artist started using phosphorescent paint on maps and collages, creating phosphorescent objects that you can see in the dark.

Phosphorescent letters, glowing in dark.

By master gilder Claudio Garneri learns to use the gold leaf and silver leaf copper and metallic colors, creating hundreds of tiles with metallic frames.

In 2003 he held some lessons with the artist Ugo Nespolo, focused on art as a tool for liberation, and exhibited in Merano in a group exhibition entitled "Dream of Peace", together with Ariela Bohm and Tobia Rava ', Hana Silberstein, Emanuele Luzzatti, Aldo Mondino and Barbara Nahmad, exponents of the Jewish art in Italy.

During his eclectic path as an artist, focused on the hidden meanings of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, Levy sees, in the back side of the created object, a kind of art that he defines "hidden art".
While the museums on the works there wrote "Do NOT touch", in his works the artist asks the viewer to touch the object raising it, or turning to see what there is on the other side.
It takes the audience carefully to try to lift and turn the work.
While he does this, time passes.
And so to the sculpture - a three-dimensional object by definition - is added the fourth dimension - time, that passes while turning the object.

Continuing in its path looking for a real backdrop to thousands of hebrew letters that spilled on this planet, in 2008 Levy discovers a new paradigm: the modular paradigm.

In this paradigm, the artist produces large modular panels, leading to the center a hook with "L" shape.
This panel is called the "Module 0".
You can hang on the hook of the smaller items, so "customizing" the work.
The latter are called the "Module 1".
In last exhibits, the gallery’s left wall has many modules 0 appended to it, while the right wall has a lot of Modules 1, also appended to the wall.
The artist asks viewers to choose from a wall to fit a module 1, take and move it and finally hang it on a hook on the module 0 that he, the viewer, chooses as he likes.
In this way the observer decide the last form of the artwork, he became a co-artist.