One of the most ambitious, inspirational and world-embracing art projects of this century is in preparation. French-Israeli painter and graphic artist Yoel Tordjman has gathered 613 of his internationally-acclaimed works and arranged for them all to be mounted on twelve of the great bridges of our planet to create an art event to bring together all humanity.

The bridge is a powerful symbol of connection between people, facilitating communication, commerce and community. The total 613 represents the number of divine ethical commandments of the Torah that are themselves bridges connecting the heavenly and human worlds. And art itself is the great bridge between people, connecting heart to heart, mind to mind, spirit to spirit.
The entire collection of 613 paintings will be displayed on each of twelve bridges in turn, offering a context of dramatically sweeping vistas from around the world. Each of the installations will be recorded in detail by drone photography and made available on the internet – itself a bridge between cultures. 

Yoel Tordjman’s art is the perfect vehicle for this event. As a visual artist, his essential medium is light. His method reveals not only the play of light on surface but the light that illuminates from within. Combining macro-photography, digital art and over-painting techniques with hundreds of translucent micro layers of colored media, his work is imbued with exceptional precision, radiant energy and shimmering, luminous depth. 

His abstract method also engages the viewer to participate in the artistic process. In a spiritual theory of color that anticipates Kandinsky by 400 years, the great sixteenth century kabbalist Rabbi Moses Cordovero of Safed explains that when a person gazes at colors, the visible hues stimulate the mind and the emotions and the deeper levels of consciousness. In his magnum opus Pardes Rimmonim, “Gate of the Colors,” section 10, chapter 1 he notes with psychological insight:
“the colors that appear to the eyes or are formed in the imagination stimulate the spiritual such that the animating soul arouses the emotional soul and the emotional soul the spiritual soul and the spiritual soul from reality to reality until it ascends to the place that it draws from and is aroused according to the reality of its form, for it is “as in water face is to face (Proverbs 27:19)” for the source sees the surface of red and causes red to flow towards it, and similarly if white, white…”

The point is that the experience of color is dynamically interactive. When we view a color, it stimulates a series of associations on visceral, emotional and spiritual levels, to the deepest source of meaning of the color, which stimulates our consciousness reflexively and sympathetically in return, spiritually, emotionally and aesthetically. In this way, the viewer feels the meanings expressed by each shade of color on multiple levels of experience, meanings that can be actively enriched by personal association and expanded to essential insight into the structure of reality. Yoel Tordjman is deeply conscious of this spiritual aesthetic, and each of his paintings facilitates this interactive, creative viewing process. He distills the essences of colors and forms to provide the viewer with a brilliantly composed and dynamic palette to internalize, project and discover meaning for themselves. 

The experience of viewing his work is challenging and exhilarating and can even be deeply therapeutic. Yoel’s canvasses ultimately give us access to joy — his own process of self-discovery stimulates a similar process in us, and through his art he shows us that each human being, each of us, is the bearer of divine light. 

Yoel has settled in Safed, contributing to the radiance of this renowned mystical city that has also been home to the modern Israeli art movement since the early twentieth century. His works are sought avidly by collectors and his exhibitions have been visited by more than seven million people on social networks over the past five years, with appreciative comments by hundreds of thousands of visitors from more than 35 countries. 

It is the hope and the prayer of all involved that in these uneasy, turbulent times, this international event will an inspirational bridge to encourage the sharing of peace and compassion among all peoples.