About Nadav Alchalel
He was born in 1962, married and a father of three, Nadav grew up on Kibbutz Lehavot HaBashan and lives in Modi’in. An optometrist by profession and a sculptor since 2001.
Similar to the author naturalist Gerald Darrell, who wrote funny stories based on the world around him, naming one of his books “My Family and Other Animals”, Nadav creates his sculptures with love, patience, diligence and meticulousness incorporating in them the unique qualities of both humans and animals.
Like many great sculptors before him, he visualizes the statue inside the stone. All that left for him is to carve out the unnecessary parts. In his sculpture, he drives pleasure and enjoyment by creating new worlds, using unique subjects and materials. A combination of original thought and intuition allows him to perceive the characteristic movement or posture of the objects of his work. With precision and attention to detail, he designs and perpetuates movement and postures allowing the context to unfold before our eyes.
Nadav was exposed to the world of art since early childhood, through the work of his parents who also painted and sculpted. He began his artistic journey in 2001 after reading an article in a local Modi’in newspaper about the sculptor Yuri Matzkin. He decided that he also wanted to create art, saying “It tickled my fingers” and he began studying with Matzkin. Since then he has diligently been enjoying sculpting.
Although the majority of his sculptures are related to nature, predominantly based on the wild animal kingdom, he also draws inspiration from the classical and abstracts.
Nadav uses a variety of materials including different types of stones like marble and basalt, concrete combined with basalt, bronze, aluminum, copper and other metals and wood. The creation of each sculpture takes many months because due to complexity of the creation process and the limited time. Because his occupation and the successful business he owns.
Many of the sculptures are created in several stages that include drawing, designing in Styrofoam or clay, building constructions from iron, net, polyaroth, and using foam which require precise attention to detail. He has exhibited his work in several group and solo showings and has exhibited in the Mamilla pedestrian mall in Jerusalem and in several galleries throughout Israel. Collectors in Israel and around the world have bought his works.
