Meet the Artist – Yossi Assouline

Magasin III Jaffa Books series of meetings with artists will host the artist Yossi Assouline with his artist book Sacrifice.

The dictionary definition of the Hebrew word “KORBAN” combines two terms – victim & sacrifice. The title of Assouline’s new artist book –sacrifice | victim semantic change, is divided in the same way. The book is a visual wander within the dictionary definition, so reading from right victim to left refers to victim and when reading from left to right reading refers to sacrifice.

The book itself is constructed as a visual code of symbols, shapes and material through which Assouline presents his interpretation of events that occurred from the moment the word “KORBAN” appeared in the Bible to the way it is used today among Hebrew speakers in Israel and around the world.

All the images in the book were printed in a technique called collagraphy. The engravings were made by Assouline from two types of putty – black putty and red putty – on wooden pallets and transferred under a manual press in two colors. Only six such copies were printed, and when he decided to produce a wider edition of the book he transferred the original prints to a risographer.