Dorian Gottlieb uses technology and the architectonic power of the collage, which enables him to animate structures and distort proportions, thereby conveying his messages. In Mr. Green, for example, he “rebuilt” the Ben-Gurion House in Tel Aviv with a little twist: he enlarged the windows and painted it green, alluding to Ben-Gurion’s original name (David Yosef Grün). These actions refer in a caricaturized manner to the ethos embodied in figure of Israel’s first Prime Minister.
Micha Ullman helps me get through refers to Gottlieb’s living environment, home to Yesod (Foundation; 1989), an outdoor statue by prominent sculptor Micha Ullman. Gottlieb presents the statue from several angles, an act evocative of the sources of photography and the photographic technique discourse, but at the same time objectifies the artwork, stepping on it and using it to cross Rothschild Boulevard on rainy days. The tension created between the work’s theoretical and practical aspects charges is with humor.
Tel Aviv Café with Shadow depicts the front of Albi Café, a center of sociopolitical activity where several clashes between activists and the police occurred recently. The drama unfolding in it seems to be flattened in the work: only the café’s window profile and its hinted shadow are shown. This is a minor piece with a political shade that avoids taking a clear position but rather marks the occurrence and creates a dialogue between journalistic and artistic photography, between real and abstract.
Gottlieb explores the boundaries of technique and uses it to hone a personal, unique and whimsical language, straddling the seam between picture and photograph, 3-D and 2-D, sublime and mundane, truth and fiction.

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