HAMESHOTETISTY
a wandering portraitist
by Roma Butman

PAINTING EXHIBITION AND LIVE PERFORMANCE
15.09.2022 to 30.09.2022  -  at EGA "Vetrina" ul.Tsar Samuil 45b  - Sofia

HaMeshotetisty
A wandering portraitist
 
The concept of the "Hameshotetisty" exhibition is an atelier (gallery) - a visual research, based on an academic research by Tal Shalom Butman, when the concept itself was invented by the researcher. As a result of Tal's research, an artist receives concepts that allow him to refer to the work in a deliberate way and break down the creative process into theoretical and abstract elements and, as a result, arrive at the creative process that does not focus only on an emotional being but also on a research being.
Interrelationships between Tal's theoretical research and the artist's visual research are built on "dialogic forces" (another concept invented by the researcher inspired by Walter Benjamin) which allows for a developing dialogue over the years to come.

The term HaMeshotetisty was conceived during academic research about the artist Roma Butman and his artworks. The term captures within itself four states of being that are distinguishable in his art: that of the city the wanderer, the internal wanderer, the artistic, and the mystic.
"I paint to wander inside myself" shares Butman. Mostly, he sits alone in front of the mirror, studying himself through the medium of painting. Emotions are his alleyways, that carry him towards internal wandering, translating his feelings into images.
The body of work in this space exposes varying states of the mind, materialized through auto-portraits and portrayals of people in Butman's life, alongside a collection born of the artist's imagination. Part of the drawings are like illustrations for texts yet unwritten, and as such they remain enigmatic.
The exhibition's space emulates Butman's home atelier, except for the display windows that overlook the streets and blur the boundaries between the private and the public. Therefore, by partaking in live, daily performance—visual research by which the artist expresses feelings associable with the disappearing interior space—an exhibition-inside-an-exhibition is created.
Will Butman choose introspection by turning his eyes towards the mirror as he usually does? Will he look at the atelier's visitors? Will he turn towards the outer space as it is reflected through the display windows? Or will this new experience bring something new altogether?
Under complex circumstances and imposed limitations that undermine the individual's free choice to wander, our freedom to wander inside is unrelinquishable. Internal wandering has not yet been cancelled.

Arch. Prof. Ruggero Lenci
University "La Sapienza" Rome

Prof. Maria Angela Falà
President "Intereligious Council of Rome"

Doc. Roberto Lucifero
Director "Centro Studi Cappella Orsini" Rome

Roma Butman working at "EGA Vetrina"