Body Heat - opening reception

Impell Gallery in collaboration with art advisor and curator, Sagi Refael, are excited to invite you to the opening of two solo exhibitions under the title “Body Heat”, by the artists Dror Yisrael Hemed and Yinon Avior Philipsohn.

Dror Yisrael Hemed
During his 5-week residency at IAILA in Los Angeles and Palm Springs (May–June 2026), Dror Yisrael Hemed created a new series of paintings inspired by Southern California’s LGBT communities, landscapes, and cultural rhythms.
In his first solo exhibition in Palm Springs, Hemed presents portraits of local figures alongside vivid impressions from the Coachella Valley, all painted from direct observation on site. Known for his lively, impassioned depictions of queer individuals, couples, and groups, he brings his curious eye and vibrant palette to this body of work - an exploration of a heated summer, and one destined to be remembered.

Yinon Avior Philipsohn
During his 3-month residency at the Tom of Finland Foundation in Los Angeles (November 2025-February 2026), Copenhagen-based artist Yinon Avior created a series of unique, hand-sewn photographic quilts, which are being shown for the first time in Palm Springs, here at Impell Gallery.
Avior’s process started by sourcing photographic images from BDSM pornographic magazines that did not make it to the Tom of Finland Foundation’s library due to their deteriorating condition.
Selected fragments were scanned by the artist, enlarged, and reprinted in several layers, echoing the repeating reuse of the model’s body in a multitude of ways through the years.
Through this repetitive process, those bodies were photographed, printed in a magazine, reused as source material, and reassembled by Avior as a quilted, put-together object.
The final artwork asks the viewer - how much can a human body endure, how much damage can an image absorb, and how many stitches can a print - or a body - take before it tears apart?