about me :)

Nadia Gorenstein – Artist. Designer. Collector

Nadia Gorenstein, is an Israeli artist, designer and collector. She works and lives in Tel Aviv, together with her spouse and two children.

Design. Nadia began her professional career as a graphic designer for a number of renowned designers in Tel Aviv. In 1997 she founded the 'Nadia Gorenstein' studio for branding and design, where she works as an independent art director, specializing in lifestyle and fashion. Among her clients are Sigal Dekel, Caligula, Ronen Chen, Golf & Co., AKIM, Fedex, Regba, and others.

Art. Alongside her work as a designer, Nadia has evolved over the years as a multidisciplinary artist who combines various materials in her work: wood, paper, textile, metal, and 'ready-made'. She uses techniques such as wood carving, sculpting in clay and in paper, drawing, print, collage, assemblage, embroidery, sewing and more.

Nadia draws inspiration from different sources and periods in art, and infuses critical humor within a global and multicultural worldview.
Period pieces serve to inspire her and form a basis for her sculpture. She extracts them from their original contexts and creates images that are de-familiarized by constructing disassembled parts into compositions that provide them with new meanings.

Collection. Ever since childhood, Nadia has had a strong desire to collect and an attraction to objects, especially artifacts that are charged with meanings and historical contexts: toys, games, appliances, and tools from times past; retro-styled and vintage graphic detailing, typography, and images.

Kokeshi. As an artist and graphic designer, Nadia has cultivated a great love for Japanese aesthetics. A few years ago her collector instinct and attraction to vintage toys – especially wooden toys – met her love for Japanese art, and she began a private collection of Japanese Kokeshi dolls of the "creative Kokeshi" type. What began as a simple hobby swiftly turned into a methodical collection of Kokeshi.The unique collection she owns now numbers over one thousand uncommonly designed Kokeshi items, created by prominent Japanese artists as well as anonymous artisans.

Inspiration. "Ever since I remember myself I have been attracted to objects, both as a collector and as an artist. Period pieces serve as inspiration for my work, either directly or indirectly. The images I create are not tied to a defined place or time; rather, they are eclectic, disassembled and assembled in a way that expresses an enigmatic fantasy.

"My creation arises from a great need, especially in the digital, virtual era that we live in, to touch materials. As a designer who spent years creating via computer, I have felt a great hunger all this time to actually touch material, to create something physical and real.
"In a world of impersonal mass production, devoid of human touch, I wish to delve into physical manual work, including traditional techniques and materials used by people over many centuries (wood, clay, textile, metal, paper). I strive to create objects that are neither precise nor clean, instead disclosing the material and the artist's hand involved in their creation.

"In a world that idolizes youth, a 'perfect' 'photoshopped' world that worships the most innovative consumer goods and consists of a never-ending chase after trends, and which is full of 'noise' produced by social media, I seek my private anchor elsewhere, precisely in the bygone past, that has grown old, cracked with age, and is therefore so human and relevant."