Niv Tishbi - I witness

I witness
Hemlock
2026 WARP Wood
12.5" x 26"

About Niv Tishbi:

While Niv Tishbi’s practice has long centered on wood, he has typically concealed rather than celebrated its material qualities. His sculptures are often painted and finished so completely that the timber becomes almost unrecognizable, transformed into an ambiguous and universal material. Over the past year or so, however, Tishbi has adopted the opposite approach. Like the other Fellows, he used the residency opportunity to experiment with unfamiliar methods, allowing the wood itself to remain visible as he sheds the paint and other forms of surface treatment.

For the exhibition, Tishbi presents several new works, the largest of which takes the form of a bath occupied by a reclining figure. Constructed from inlaid veneer on plywood, the sculpture initially suggests an intimate scene of rest: someone immersed in a long, hot bath. Yet the saturated crimson surface quickly unsettles this reading. Is the figure relaxing in warm water, or submerged in something altogether more threatening? “It’s a reminder that there is always a hidden threat,” Tishbi explains. Looking closely, the bath reveals another contradiction. The grain appears strangely unfamiliar. Knots dissolve into abstract patterns, and the surface seems simultaneously natural and artificial. Rather than using conventional timber, Tishbi works with bespoke ALPI veneer, an engineered wood produced by dismantling and reconstructing tree trunks into entirely new forms before slicing them into veneer sheets. Although made from 100% natural wood, the material produces grains, textures, and patterns that could never occur in nature. The result is a material that appears authentic while quietly revealing itself to be manufactured—a fitting metaphor for works that continually unsettle the boundary between appearance and reality.