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ArtPalmBeach Festival Spotlights “Interactive” Israeli Flag Display

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Artist David Datuna stands in front of two of his unique Israeli flags, laden with text, photos and eyeglasses.Artist David Datuna attracted a great deal of attention at the recent ArtPalmBeach festival with his highly distinctive “Viewpoint of Millions: Israel Beyond A Dream” display, which presented three Israeli flags as large backdrops filled with text, pictures and eyeglass lenses. “It’s performance art, because you are involved,” explained the 28-year-old artist, whose creations were exhibited at the Palm Beach Convention Center. “For me, it’s not only about the lenses. It’s about people’s souls. It’s the way they look at anything.”

The three Israeli flags, which ranged from seven to eight feet long and five to six feet high, each embodied a different time frame of the Jewish state’s history. One represented Israel’s past, with black and white images from the Holocaust, the 1948 War of Independence and the 1967 Six-Day War. A second flag encapsulated modern Israel, featuring the flag’s blue and white colors incorporated with texts and photographs about Palestinians, the Oslo peace accord and other topics related to contemporary Israeli life. The texts included excerpts from such books as “The Diary of Anne Frank,” “Revolt” by Menachem Begin, “Exodus” by Leon Uris, and “Never Again” by Rabbi Meir Kahane.

The third “flag” was actually nothing more than a white-on-white intimation of an Israeli flag, the purpose of which was to stimulate viewers to imagine what they would like the Jewish state to become. “You make your own reincarnation on the future of the country,” Datuna said. “You are part of the flag.”
The three-part visual wonder is one aspect of Datuna’s wider project known as “Viewpoint of Millions,” wherein he imposes eyeglass lenses on various artworks, including depictions of the late technology entrepreneur Steve Jobs, Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and the American and Canadian flags.
According to Datuna, who hails from the Soviet Union, his motives for filling his art pieces with lenses are based on a desire to illustrate how the same object can appear differently depending on the lens one uses to view it, as well as the wish to demonstrate how an item can look different depending on the angle of the view. “Any movement gives you a different vision,” the artist asserts. “You can choose whatever lenses you want. Find your angle for the image you want to see.”

In order to obtain the effect he is seeking, Datuna is required to glue together images, drill holes in the lenses and stitch them back together, and then attach it all to a plywood board. Each work of art utilizes anywhere from two to three thousand lenses; in fact, the Israeli flag creation wound up including more than 5,000 lenses.

Apparently, all of this intense effort is worth it for Datuna, as his creations are often sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the case of his latest work, it has given him the opportunity to express his feelings toward the Jewish state. “I love Israel, and I have visited it several times,” the modern artist relates. “Israel is special because it’s a young country and has short stories. That makes it hard, but interesting, to show Israel to the world.” Datuna also turned his sentiments into action by having the proceeds from the sale of his Israeli-themed work donated to the Jewish Agency and the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County. Summing up his profession and his passion – which are obviously one and the same – Datuna declares, “I want to show art in a different way – make global ideas and put my stamp on civilization.”

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