Curated by: Maryana Kaliner
KALINER (previously FORMah Gallery, https://kalinergallery.com/noga-yudkovichetzioni)
The gallery opened its doors in its permanent location in the Lower East Side, NYC in 2022.
In Running Line, Yudkovik-Etzioni explores the boundaries between material, memory and abstraction. The exhibition includes three large-scale floor installations and a selection of small wall-mounted paper reliefs. Though the works appear solid and heavy, they are made almost entirely from paper and modest materials like cardboard, rubber, and latex.
At the center of the exhibition is Backyard, an installation inspired by the artist’s childhood in a kibbutz. Using steam, she softens cardboard to shape it into objects that resemble toy blocks, wheels, swim fins, or bicycle seats. Arranged across the floor in undulating lines, these forms suggest a playful landscape frozen in time, as if children had just left the scene.
The objects, which the artist calls "immigrant objects", hint at stories of transition, memory and movement. They are fragmented, folded, rebuilt and reimagined. The familiar becomes strange through changes in scale and material, turning cardboard into something precious and poetic.
Waves, a second floor installation, offers a lighter, rhythmic counterpart to Backyard. Placed by the window, it echoes the motion of the sea using yellow tape, hair rollers and soft sculptural elements that feel improvised and musical.
On the gallery walls, the Air Pocket series features small mixed-media reliefs made of layered, torn and painted paper. These abstract forms contain empty spaces at their core, like lungs or shells. Treated surfaces in black or white mimic materials such as metal, adding a surprising richness to these fragile works.
Personal symbols appear throughout the exhibition. Swim fins recall Yudkovik-Etzioni's past as a swimmer, knitting spools refer to her mother, and altered objects like firecrackers or bicycle seats evoke memories without directly illustrating them. She describes them as "private jokes" that suggest more than they explain.
With Running Line, Yudkovik-Etzioni creates an imaginative space where function is removed, and objects become carriers of emotion, transformation and play.
The exhibition Running Line was featured in two international art publications:
A review in Artforum, written by Micaela Houtin, explores the material and conceptual dimensions of the show. Click here to read the article:
https://www.artforum.com/events/micaela-houtin-on-noga-yudkovik-etzioni-1234723712/?fbclid=IwY2xjawHKHpJleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHbz5ndDVjwWVGCaj-WXmIGpXnv-Kij5H1-JeU3nR8wQzjV9hlbi13IRyPQ_aem_takBsgE10S_kqCgfWoYjyg
A second feature in Art Spiel offers an in-depth look at Yudkovik-Etzioni’s process, materials, and personal narrative. Click here to read the article:
https://artspiel.org/running-line-noga-yudkovik-ezioni-at-formah-gallery/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR06JbuhqPep897MPUi67dj5DhNcZSgRDdMfO_iUezvLCF6ZDOcldrW8KaI_aem_CGQbvnGYHmbDHO6t6ZiEBw#more-20771
Haifa Museum of Art, 2023
Curator: Limor Alpern
In recent years, Yudkovik-Etzioni has become known for her large-scale horizontal installations placed directly on the floor. In this exhibition, however, the perspective shifts: the sculptures rise vertically from the floor to the ceiling, alongside wall-mounted works. Each sculptural column is distinct, marked by its own unique characteristics, with the stacked elements exploring the limits of height, stability, and structure. Yudkovik-Etzioni investigates various possibilities of vertical ascent - growth upwards that teeters on the edge of collapse. Is this an aspiration to rise or a yearning to fall? Caught between the material’s desire to ascend and the pull of gravity, the sculptures find a fleeting point of balance - a delicate equilibrium between tension and stability.
Curator: Yair Barak
In the beginning, there were the floor and the wall. And the space was empty. Then the window was created, and there was light.
Beams is a site-specific suspended installation created for the northern gallery at Makom Le’omanut. It began with a simple spatial division: Vered Bobrov took responsibility for the wall, while Noga Yudkovik-Etzioni claimed the floor. Presented here are two sculptural installations, each forming an autonomous conceptual and aesthetic world. Each one is highly characteristic of its creator.
Curator: Yair Barak
A wall installation composed of modular hexagonal elements inspired by honeycomb structures - forms known for their protective, flexible, and efficient qualities. Starting from this shape, often used to separate or shield, I explored its transformation into a sculptural and emotional language.
The work draws on a childhood memory from the kibbutz - lying in bed at midday, always facing the wall. Hidden within the installation are numerous abstract "eyes," which I call “eyes to the wall.”
Created in a short time frame, the sculptural objects were built quickly and intuitively, like drawing in space. I used materials such as Formica, latex, and rubber, allowing for stretch, compression, and fluidity.
The color palette is mostly black and gray, with small metallic touches of blue and green.
The work plays with abstract values: shape, rhythm, tension, color, and space - leaving room for improvisation and open interpretation on the gallery wall.
The Biennale of Crafts and Design, Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv.
Chief Curators: Henrietta Eliezer Brunner, Yuval Saar
In this exhibition, which reflects on the human condition and the shaping of a new era, I present Aqueduct - a sculptural installation inspired by man-made water channels designed to transport water from one place to another. Water, as a vital source of life, is at the heart of this work.
The piece reflects on the complex and urgent global realities surrounding water: access, control, scarcity, and its deep connection to human survival, power, and politics. While clean water is taken for granted in many parts of the world, billions still live without it. Water becomes not only a physical necessity but a social and ethical question.
The installation consists of two long sculptural lines, each 9 meters in length (extendable based on the space), built from paper, cast rubber, cardboard, and wood. These forms evoke flowing channels and raise awareness of water as a life-giving force - essential for growth, health, and sustainability.
Through Aqueduct, I aim to bring this critical issue into focus, inviting reflection on the vital role of water in shaping our shared future.
piles 2020
size: 120x25x10 cm
Materials: wood, iron, and rope.
Oh No! Sigh.. group exhibition, Curator: Yair Barak
ArtspaceTLV
Tel Aviv Biennale of Crafts & Design 2020, MUZA Erez Israel Museum Tel-Aviv
Objects Sculpted out of Cardboard and paper are distorted in terms of their proportions and scale, featuring parts that fold, come apart, and are cut, broken, or rebuilt. The papers used to connect and construct the parts, creating a fantastic thicket and structuring journey on which the familiar becomes strange. This invention constitutes a return to a childhood memory in which a public garden or backyard are transformed into a wild jungle where interesting things take place; games, explorations, and discoveries, which provide the material for this work.
2019-2020
Traces is A group show part of the 7th 7th National Biennial for Drawing in Jerusalem curated by Abraham Kritzman at Barbur Gallery
2018
Wall Installation
Artist Wall at ArtspaceTLV
Curator: Dalia Danon
Old Jaffa Museum, 2017
Curator: Ilan Garibi
Symbols of Heros ,Wall Installation, Paper Sculpting
“Much of the heroism is summed up in the symbol that hero puts on his clothes. My works are a continuation of my preoccupation with the local and the national . as well with signs, foreigners and symbols. the inspiration for these symbols develops during my stay in Paris along with the preoccupation with the city structure, the hero of the city and a war hero.
In these symbols the main Structure is always made up for different geometrical Shapes.
The Paper Biennale ,The Eretz Israel Museum of Art 2017
Air pockets- various kinds of papers, ink ,acrylic, gouache, industrial colors,
mixed media.
The reliefs , which fashion on wall-piece, are made of layers of papers surfaces, which capture air pockets within themselves.
These are constructed of silhouettes in varying quality and thickness, which respond to various manual acts. The papers are treated with techniques such as coloring, drawing. stamping, cutting, tearing, itching ,etc.; thus, fashioning a building block for complex 3D structures. The monochromatic coloring (black and white) and the manner in which the surface is processed “disguises” the paper as another substance, endowing part of the work with a metallic appearance.
The paper reliefs oscillate between the abstract and the figurative. They amalgamate utterly amorphous forms with fragment of fauna and flora images
"Running Line" 2016
קו רץ 2016
Artspace Tel Aviv, Curator: Nir Harmat
The sculptural installation ‘Running Line’ expands the relationship between formalism, language, culture, and narrative, while creating a space that is both experiential and imaginary. On the floor lies a collection of objects resembling everyday goods made of simple and perishable materials.
The technique used for making each object involves a delicate balance of construction and destruction. The sculptures embody this duality; they disappear into their own image, revealing themselves in a sort of re-birth as something that is familiar yet completely strange and unique. Their deliberate deterioration acts as contrast to the feeling of reproduction and reconstruction that they induce.
Tying together systems of values from the world of visual art and the world of physical objects alike, the installation starts resembling a self-referential warehouse. The exhibition floods us with memories of daily attributes, and acts as a personal and collective mausoleum that attempts to preserve banality, emptiness, and facade. In their accumulation, their power grows, and they become a mental and visual analogy of disappearance.
“Shelf”, site-specific installation presented at Artspace Tel Aviv in 2015.
״מדף״ - קיר אמן בגלרית המקום לאמנות, תל אביב 2015
This installation was built specifically for the gallery space in order to interact with its architectural content. Objects rest high on a shelf that is built at an angle, turning the viewer’s gaze upwards. The installation deals with abstractions, rhythm, and space, and its objects were built with a very meticulous technique that obscures itself in the final result.
אותות 2013
“Emblems” is a wall Installation exhibited at the Eretz Israel Museum in 2013 as part of the Ceramics Biennale.
“Emblems” takes the imagery of military ribbons and turns it into an abstract composition, creating a formalistic and geometric installation in conversation with minimalism, yet full of cultural symbolism.
אותות 2009
“Emblems”, Artists’ House Tel Aviv, 2009
The installation “Emblems” uses a single imagery that repeats itself, changes tempo, grows and transforms. The gap between the interpretable symbol at the origin of the work (military ribbons and emblems), and the formalistic abstraction that stems from it, activates the space like a rhythmic painting.
“Wreaths” 2006-2009
זרים 2006-2009
The “Wreaths” installation includes both narrative and abstract dimensions. The first is concerned with the literary motifs of the victory laurels and mourning wreaths, and the latter is concerned with the formalistic interactions between circles, lines, space and material.
“Kibbutz Time” - The Dining Hall as Allegory, 2009
זמן קיבוץ
“Kibbutz Time” was a group show that took place in the the dining hall of Kibbutz Yifat in 2009, and tried to imagine the kibbutz dining hall as an allegorical space.
My site-specific piece, “The Belonging Table” creates a ribbon or emblem with the colors black, white and blue, that become activated as a sign and signifier of belonging - belonging to the country, the kibbutz, to an age group, the nursery home, and to the family unit.
“The Belonging Table” was also presented at Binyamin Gallery in 2013.
Quickly Traced on a Ship’s Deck
שורטט בחיפזון על סיפונה של אוניה
In creating this installation, I ventured on a sailing expedition and attempted to create a space that was organized, modular, and methodical. I let actions that could be described as “taking the wind out of the sails” guide me through the work.
The objects in this installation were built from common everyday materials through processes that transformed and re-imagined them.
Integrating the objects into the surrounding space, I attempted to present an alternative world - one where the promise of a quiet existence, unmediated by the constant flow of questions and answers, could exist for even a moment. But from the very beginning, the transience of the structures made itself known, since they were traced quickly, on the deck of a ship.
“Shmulik the Hedgehog” -
Narrative Playground and Sculpture Garden
שמוליפוד
“Shmulik the Hedgehog” is a sculpture garden I built in 2007 that functions as a narrative playground for kids, inspired by the children’s story “Shmulik the Hedgehog” or “Shmulikipod” by the author Teshrani Karmi. It spans about 22 acres (or 5.5 dunam).
In the garden are 7 hedgehogs of various sizes, 6 strawberry sculptures, painted iron footprints that lead the children through the playground, and signs alongside the path that portray the story of Shmulik the Hedgehog.
The Hedgehog sculptures (7) are made of a polymeric material and a painted rubber cast:
Large Hedgehog - 135x115x175 cm (x2)
Round Hedgehog - 95x125x125 cm
Semicircle Hedgehog - 75x125x115 cm
Small Hedgehog - 55x110x85 cm (x3)
Metal box, painted iron, 35x100x80 cm
Strawberries (6), painted polymeric material, 55x30x33 cm
Footprints, cut and painted iron, 15x20 cm
