Roy Nachum

Roy Nachum (born 1979, Jerusalem) is a contemporary artist. Nachum studied at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York and is living and working New York City. Roy Nachum is a painter, sculptor and installation artist. He experiments with human perception. He sees his work as an “eye opener". In recent works Nachum has experimented with Braille, building up the surface of the canvas with sculpted paint squares. He encourages people to touch and interact with the work, believing that human interaction keeps the work alive and breaks the barrier between viewer and the “sacred object”. The artist often paints subjects, whose vision is obscured, like the recurring image of a child with his eyes covered by a gold crown, representing man’s blindness caused by displaced values and desire. His works have been collected by many prominent art collectors and celebrities, such as: Jay Z, Sir Phillip Green, Leonardo DiCaprio, Justin Timberlake, Alicia Keys, Swizz Beatz, Art Coll-Mexico City, and Rihanna.

Bibliography

Nachum, was born in Jerusalem. He studied at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, and at Cooper Union in New York, and has since been based in New York's Soho neighborhood. Nachum is known for creating work that experiments with poetry written in Braille. Nachum's work has been collected with in the hip-hop and music industry by artists such as Jay Z, Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, Jessica Biel, Leonardo Dicaprio, Alicia Keys, and Swizz Beats.^[1]

Anti (2015)

Rihanna commissioned Nachum to create the album cover for her album Anti.

Barbadian singer Rihanna was first introduced to Nachum's work by her mentor Jay Z, who had been a longtime fan of his, following this Rihanna and Nachum met and began discussing art and had an instant "connection"; “We see the same things. It was kind of like, when I tried explaining about my work, she was really into it, we share the same perspective, perception.” Shortly after the meeting Rihanna commissioned Nachum to create the artwork for her then upcoming eighth studio album Anti (2015), Nachum began work in the piece and tried to create a symbol that was unique to Rihanna's life. Nachum used a childhood image of Rihanna to pay homage to her heritage and a gold crown to represent her success., speaking about the crown symbol Nachum said; “Sometimes we’re running in the world of today but we’re running after achievement, after achievement, the crown is oversized and covering what we’re supposed to see. We can’t see the success.”^[2] Speaking about the artworks concept Nachum said the artwork;

In October 2015, Rihanna debuted her cover art for her eighth studio album.^[3] The album cover art was designed by Israeli artist Roy Nachum, and was described by Rihanna as her "favorite album cover".^[4] The album's front cover shows an image of Rihanna, which was taken on her first day of day care,^[5] holding a black balloon, with a gold crown covering her eyes, the majority of the artwork is black and white with a "smattering" of red paint.^[4] Speaking about the cover arts concept, Nachum stated that he painted a young Rihanna to represent her "bringing something new" to music.^[6]

Over the red, black and white canvas there is a poem written in Braille by poet Chloe Mitchell.^[4] At the gallery, the album's back cover, along with multiple inside album artworks were revealed. The album back cover features a similar image of Rihanna as a child, however this time from behind, like the front cover the back art features Braille, while the inside cover features poetry sculpted in Braille by Nachum, the use of Braille made the album become the first album ever to incorporate physical Braille.^[7] The seven pieces of artwork were all named and featured a poem written by Mitchell or Nachum, the front and back covers were titled “If They Let Us Part I” and “If They Let Us Part II” and featured a poem that was split over the front and back, another piece entitled "If They Let Us" was commissioned and featured the full reading of the poem.^[8] The inside booklet contains a further five pieces entitled “Fire Part I”, “Fire Part II”, “Fire Part III” and “R”.^[8]

References

^{[9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18]}

External links

• The official Roy Nachum website