Reviews

A Kabbalistic Visionary

"Artists should see nothing as it is, but fuller, simpler, stronger: to that end, their lives must contain a kind of youth and spring, a kind of habitual intoxication," Friedrich Nietsche writes. Bentzion Jacob (BenTzion) is just such an artist.

The erotic dimension of Kabbalistic texts that BenTzion captures in his extraordinary art has become a pressing interest for current scholarly interpretation. Like a mandala of his Indian heritage, his paintings seem to invite the visitor to enter them.

Much of BenTzion's art can be read as a transposition of a complex metaphysics into richly colored shapes. His remarkable works can be perceived in noplatonic terms as an efflorescence of the divine life of the One."

Dr. Edit Wischegrod, Emeritus

J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Philosohy and Relgious thought

Rice University

A Force of Nature (translated from the French version)

"Even though he is the author of these inspired paintings, BenTzion is far from being purely spirit. No--this guy is a force of nature! His words are passionate and abundant; he loves life and the world around him. But it is not worldly seductions that he desires to portray. No, that world is an illusion in his eyes; on the contrary, he has chosen to portray that which is ordinarily invisible.

He reveals the hidden meanings and mysteries hidden by the screen of so-called reality.

Acting as a medium he shares with us his visions and his inspired dreams. Originated in the most mythic past, symbolic signs surface. We suspect that by knowing the secret code we will be able to come a bit closer to Knowledge. It is up to us to know how to use the keys which he is proposing."

Alain Blondel

Galerie Alain Blondel

Paris

 

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