Guided by Light: Daniel Enkaoua, Dale Chihuly

Guided by Light: Daniel Enkaoua and Dale Chihuly

Curator: Hadas Glazer

The encounter between Dale Chihuly and Daniel Enkaoua presents a rich dialogue between two artists exploring the relationship between light, material,  and time. Chihuly, the renowned American glass artist, and Enkaoua, a French-Israeli painter, work in different mediums but share a common pursuit — capturing that elusive moment when light is transformed into color, transparency, and texture.

Chihuly infuses glass with wild, untamed energy, offering a bold and personal interpretation of the classical Venetian tradition. Enkaoua, by contrast, delves into the intimate connection between the figures and still lifes he paints and the infinite, contemplative backgrounds they inhabit. Both artists, each in their own way, investigate how material — whether molten glass shaped in a blazing workshop or paint applied layer by layer — can become a vessel for capturing time and movement.

While both draw inspiration from tradition, they are not bound by it — they deconstruct and reimagine it anew.
Chihuly engages in a dialogue with the Venetian glassmaking heritage, known for its symmetry and ornamentation, yet transcends it towards an expressive, almost primal language. His creative process begins with vibrant drawings that envision each piece and culminates in the hotshop, where they are transformed into sculptures full of color, twists, and dynamic motion. Many of the Venetians series were created in the 1990s and 2000s in collaboration with Lino Tagliapietra, one of Venice’s greatest glass artists. The result is both a homage to tradition and a breakthrough beyond it — swirling lines, clashing colors, and a balance of elements inspired by organic forms from flora and fauna. For Chihuly, glass is a sculptural body that captures light, reflects it, and engages in a dialogue of transparency, brilliance, and depth. Much like Caravaggio’s baroque paintings, light here is not merely a tool — it is the heart of the dramatic event. In Chihuly’s work, light becomes the story itself — a raw, elusive substance capable of altering the color and form of what unfolds before our eyes.

Enkaoua anchors his practice in the tradition of realist figurative painting through prolonged observation, yet converses with the language of abstraction — evoking Rothko’s endless color fields and Giacometti’s slender, contemplative figures. His subjects are present, but only at their edges — contours blur, colors dissolve, and the figure sinks into layers of transparency and emotional detachment, glazed with distance. The light in his paintings is soft, subtle. Color does not merely depict a figure but reveals its emotional state, carrying its inner mood. His figures seem to emanate an inner glow. Here too, as with Chihuly, there is both reverence for tradition and a quiet subversion of it. Enkaoua’s portraits do not aim to document a likeness but to capture its transience — the movement between appearance and disappearance.

Despite differences in material and medium, both artists focus on the manifestation of light.
Chihuly operates from an expressive impulse reminiscent of Jackson Pollock — a gesture of material release, surrender to chaos, where technical virtuosity meets spontaneity. Enkaoua, on the other hand, navigates between the physical and metaphysical — not seeking to depict a figure, but to evoke its presence. His paintings resemble fleeting moments — images that emerge and fade, merging into their backgrounds.

The encounter between Chihuly and Enkaoua is unexpected yet profoundly natural. Chihuly creates pulsating, twisting forms — almost alive; Enkaoua paints faint memories — residues of light, color, and feeling. Both strive to seize a moment, to capture the ephemeral — a movement, a glow, a flash — and give it substance.

In this exhibition, material itself — whether molten glass or diluted paint — becomes a space where light acts, exists, and leaves its resonant echo behind.

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