In her work, as the critic Elke Buhr points out, there is a mixture of politics and beauty.
Alona Harpaz (1971) was born in Tel Aviv, Israel. She currently lives and works in Berlin. She studied at The Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem, and at the International Center of Photography in New York. With her iconic palette, Alona mixes and juxtaposes pure colors in a profuse and unrestricted way, filling her works with vibrant gestures of sensuality and strength. In her work, as the critic Elke Buhr points out, there is a mixture of politics and beauty. In one of her self-portraits, "Frequency Watchers", she paints herself on a motorbike alluding to the Riot Grrrl, and of course, to the band Bikini Kill, who mixed punk, feminism and pink lipstick in an unusual way. According to the artist: "perfectly beautiful paintings can be terrible". Colors exist in their own right, as abstract points, organic forms, or scribbles without a particular purpose. They can also point to things we recognize. The combination of politics and beauty in her work is, in a way, a reflection of her family: her father was born on a Kibbutz and her Romanian mother was a ballet dancer. As Richard Prince wrote in ArtReview magazine, her "painting... is a mixture of Matisse with Sigmar Polke and punk. Maybe even with Kippenberger..."
Her work can be seen in the Israel Museum Collection, Richard Prince Collection, Anita & Poju Zabludowicz Collection, Wendy Fisher Collection, Barbara Gladstone Collection, Chadra Collection, Michael L. Hittleman Collection and Sami & Anette Bollag Collection.