born in Israel, 1975
lives and works in Tel Aviv

Adi Brande describes himself as a collector from childhood, driven by passion and curiosity. Each object that he collects and gathers, receives unique treatment - photographing, scanning, duplication, ripping and pasting, or disassembling and assembling. Each object, material and image calls for different treatment and a different type of intervention. Brande uses his works as traps of aesthetics and beauty: nostalgic slides are revealed as a reservoir of images of Jaffa and Tel Aviv from 1948; decorative plates with the portraits of the King and Queen of Iran evoke moments from the complicated political history of Israel-Iran relations; the back side of mirrors produced in China expose a mass consumer culture, inexpensive and exploitative; a doll named Jamila that was never removed from its wrapping, and a torn medal of valor from the Yom Kippur War tell their stories. The images are beautiful and captivating, the colorfulness is charming, the photo paper is sparkling, and all this happiness reflects a ticking time bomb - the cultural and political reality of Israel 2013.