In his solo exhibition “Israel Hayom” [Israel Today], Tomer Dekel presents a series of paintings created directly on the pages of the Haaretz and Israel Hayom newspapers. A word, an image, or an idea found on the newsprint expands and takes over the double-page spread, transforming into an intense painting that obscures and erases most of what preceded it. Some of these paintings rest on wooden pallets typically used for transporting goods, which Dekel reshapes into wild, creature-like forms, part pagan sculptures, part functional display racks.

Unlike Yedioth Ahronoth or Maariv, Israel Hayom and Haaretz are not merely newspapers with distinct political identities representing opposite ends of the Israeli political spectrum without apology or disguise. Their names do not reference the world of journalism at all, but rather a place, a country, a dream of it, and a sense of ownership over it. While the name Haaretz [The Land] connects to a yearning for the utopian vision of the Promised Land — a focal point of dreams from the days of the biblical patriarch Abraham through generations of Jews in the Diaspora — the name Israel Hayom [Israel Today] seeks to cling to, manifest, and acknowledge current reality. Does the agenda already embedded in the newspapers’ titles transfer to their readers? In a period when many speak of disintegration and division, Dekel examines which moments and images — a hoopoe, the Hula Agamon — make him feel at home.

Dekel’s decision to paint exclusively on daily newsprint challenges the concept of the tabula rasa, or the “blank slate.” For him, encountering a clean, white canvas straight from the factory feels like an illusion, a detached attempt to create something out of nothing. In contrast to the European tradition of stretching clean canvas over a wooden frame, Dekel operates within a local space devoid of a deep painting history, yet saturated with political history, memory, and burning current events. The printed newspaper allows him to dive directly into a living medium, simultaneously transforming the news text into both a canvas and a source for the painterly event.

Similarly, the sculpture, the wild creatures Dekel constructed to support the paintings, are made from materials with a past: wooden pallets found on the street. These pallets, used for carrying heavy loads, are also referred to in Hebrew as rafts (rafsodot), vessels built in a makeshift manner and often associated with the smuggling of refugees. Dekel dismantles them, strictly using only the raw materials derived from them. Based on where the pallet was collected, the shape and condition of the wood, or an intuitive feeling, he matches one specific pallet with one specific painting. In the exhibition, they break apart and stand on their own, ready to enter the daily warfare of the Israeli space. Much like in the painting Yamit 2000, which depicts the infamous clash of white plastic chairs at local hospitality venues, the destiny of the material changes in the hands of whoever holds it, whoever decides to dismantle it, or whoever chooses to tell a different story with it.