“Adi Nes–Testaments”

Adi Nes’s staged, photos are, in a word, epic, sometimes Biblical so: Among other themes, this Israeli artist has leveraged Old Testament stories to weigh in on the vicissitudes of life in a nation—the Jewish State—that has been embroiled in conflict since its founding. Soldiers from the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) have appeared in a number of his works—metaphors, perhaps, for the way Israeli society prizes machismo in dealing with existential threats from its neighbors, while overlooking the fact that male bonding under fire is charged with homoerotic undertones. In these and other images Nes employs technical polish with cinematic panache to explore the complexity of Israeli identity.