Putty Powder: a Working Method
Avivit Ballas Baranes

In my work, material is not merely a medium; it is the place where the work takes place. It is where things happen: they are pressed, cracked, and transformed, and from within these processes the image emerges — or fails to emerge.

I want the work to carry its own time; not to exist merely as a final result, but as a process with a history embedded within the layers of material. The layers and ruptures allow the image, when it appears, to remain unstable, existing as a trace between presence and absence. Each work has a “biography”; it carries the memory of the actions that shaped it, like a map of remnants. What is visible is not only an image, but an accumulation of time and the presence of the body.

I have worked with putty powder throughout my practice. It is a foundational material in my work. Among all the possible materials available in art, I have remained committed to a material whose original purpose is to fill cracks and repair imperfections in surfaces. Putty powder exists only because there is already a crack, rupture, or discontinuity in the surface. I work with a material whose original function is to disappear after the act of repair, and transform it into something that becomes present within the artwork. At times it remains exposed; at times it is mixed with other materials; and at times it becomes the surface itself. It does not conceal a rupture or a void, but rather makes their existence visible.

By its very nature, putty powder is connected to absence, damage, and imperfection. I do not view these states only as expressions of loss or injury. At times, beauty emerges precisely through processes of disintegration, erosion, and transformation. It arises from places where wholeness is disrupted: in wear, in accumulated layers, in remaining traces, and in what resists being closed into a single stable form.

Over the years, I have come to understand that putty powder has become a working method for me. It is not only a material that appears in my works, but also their internal logic. In this sense, it reflects the way I approach memory: as an ongoing process of processing, covering, and revealing, in which what has been broken, lost, or transformed does not disappear, but continues to exist as a visible or hidden layer in the present.

My work is therefore built through acts of repair, intervention, accumulation, partial covering, exposure of layers, mapping of remnants, and the preservation of traces. Putty powder is thus not merely a material component of my work, but a way of thinking and working with time, memory, identity, and cultural heritage.