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The Guardian 20th Septeber 1989 Tim Hilton
Review of Whitechapel Open 'Under eastern Eyes'

"I am impressed by...collage on board by Yair Meshoulam. It's small, curiously detailed and personal, yet its title Planet has justice; the painting is about the people of the world."
Work exhibited 'Planet' (1989 Collage on Board 36x40cm) Sold to private collector.

New Statesman 24th July 1992 David Langsam
Review of Whitechapel Open
Work exhibited 'Astronaut Altarpiece' (1992 26 Panels Oil on Borad mounted on Canvas Stretcher. Total Size 122x183cm) 19 panels sold to various Private collectors.

Der Tagespiegel Berlin Newspaper 24th September 1994 Katrin Bettina Muller
Review of 'Bello' Show in Bahnhof Westend (Railway station coverted into public gallery space) Artists from Berlin and London, DAAD / RCA, British Council in Berlin.
Work exhibited 'Tree of Life' Ten paintings series; Paintings from Zohar; Installation to glazed passageway collaborative work with Christine Kuhn.

Ham & High London Local newspaper 3rd March 1995 Linda Talbot
Review of 'As Above...so below' Two person Show at Ben Uri Gallery, Dean St, Soho, London.
Work exhibited Series of 34 paintings based on the Kabbalistic text Zohar Book of Splendour- Diagrams of Splendour, 'Eziekiel's Chariot', King Solomon's Garden, Seven Days of Creation, The Ten Lights. Many sold to private collectors.
'Magic and morality of the spiritual search for Man's origins.
Man's imagination knows no bounds when it comes to speculation on his origins. Add some morality and a little magic and you have the essence of the Kabbalah.
Yair Meshoulam is well versed in this Jewish book of spiritual theory; with meditation, where divine names and letter permutations are among ways of attaining higher consciousness, and the magical, with signs and incantaions altering or influencing events. The most important texts have not been published. But Meshoulam draws ample inspiration from those that have.
At the Ben Uri Gallery in Dean Street, Soho, until March 12, he extends layers of interpretation in 34 paintings based on the medieval text of Zohar -The Book of Spledour edited by Gershom Scholem.
The paintings are suitably symbolic; the strong imagery promting personal response. In the Seven Days of Creation, life uncoils like the proverbial serpent, with light and darkness at its core. The land forms, fish appear, then people, represented by the structure of DNA.
men look at two shooting stars in one work, relating to the belief that each worldly object is protected by a star. Comets were thought to influence plant growth and even precious stones. It was held that if gleeming steel was flashed before someone with jaundice, it would emulate the comet's tail and the patient would be cured.
The Ten Lights with an old man and discs hung like leaves of a tree, containing symbols, refers to the balance between such elements as wisdom and love, psychology and physics. In this case photographs of paintings Meshoulam completed for a show in Berlin are placed in the discs.
Out of the depths might be a bucket lowered into a well but refers to prayer drawing from a blessing from above to below. Three aspects of the Soul explores in a series of brown circles against purple flowers, the belief that, in the newly dead, the vital soul, or nefesh, still clings to the world. The second stage, the ruah, is the spirit which dresses as the person did in this world, while the super soul or neshamah rises at last, never to return to earth.
A work based on Ezekiel's vision is one of the most impressive; fraught with fantasy as the chariot, drawn by strange beasts, hurtles through heaven....'

Jewish Chronicle Magazine 24th Feb 1995 Michele Morris
Review of 'As above ..so below' Show at Ben Uri Gallery, Dean St, Soho, London

RCA Society Newsletter 1996
From Beyond Englad
In a show called Beyond England (Hockney Gallery 8-15 April) of work made by RCA Graduates abroad, Christine Kuhn and Yair Meshoulam exhibited photographs and text from two collaborative shows of installation and painting work in Germany. The first was in a converted railway station in Berlin in 1994 as part of a group show funded by the British Council (as part of a festival celebrating the withdrawal of allied troops from the city) of ten artists, five from London and five from Berlin who had met through the DAAD-HDK cultural exchange programme which has been operating at the RCA over the past 20 years. Christine Kuhn and Yair Meshoulam worked on a shared theme of Kabbalah/Jewish Mysticism, Kuhn using German poetry (particularly Nelly Sachs) influenced by Kabbalah, and writing in gesson on glass in a glazed passageway leading to a darker area with paintings by Meshoulam arranged in the form of the Tree of Life and using magic symbolism, together with selected work from a series based on the Kabbalistic text 'Zohar, the Book of Splendour'.
The second show, in March of this year, was held in Seigen Public Gallery, as part of a Jewish Christian Festival. Christine and Yair continued to explore the Kabbalistic Mystical theme, with text written on plastic sheets fixed over twenty one skylights overhead, and paintings hung on the walls around. The theme was further developed by using a circular format for both text and images. Both shows were successful and gained press coverage in Berlin's Tagesspeigel, and Seigen press.'

Seigen Press 'Dialog' Show 1996
Westfalishe Rundschau 5th March
Westfalishe Post 5th March
Siegener Zeituung 4th March

Jewish Chronicle 6th June 1997 Julia Weiner
Making their Mark
"Yair Meshoulam is also interested in Judaic tradition, and has produced a whole body of painting based on the Kabbalistic text, the Zohar, which have been exhibited in London and in Sigen, Germany. He is currently working on a further series, inspired by the Golem of Prague, which will be exhibited shortly in Durham University."

Courtauld Gallery Education Dept. April 1998 Julia Weiner
Accompanying Text for Solo Show of Paintings 'Androids, Robots and Golems' shown at Trevelyan College, Durham University.

Despite the fact that he was born in Haifa, Israel and bears a typical Israeli name, the pronunciation of which never ceases to challenge new acquaintances, Yair Meshoulam has lived in England since the age of three and was educated at those bastions of our establishment, the University of Oxford and the Royal College of Art. He speaks little Hebrew and is not a practising Jew, but as this exhibition demonstrates, this does not preclude him from taking an active interest in Jewish history and tradition.

For several years he has explored the Jewish mystical tradition of the Kabbalah in his work, culminating in the production of a series of paintings based on the Zohar, a medieval text which is regarded as the most important of Kabbalistic works. Included in this exhibition are works inspired by key aspects of Kabbalistic thought including the Vision of Ezekiel and the Sefirothic Tree of Life (‘The Ten Lights’).

More recently, the speed of technological advances in the field of cloning which has resulted in Dolly the Sheep has led Yair Meshoulam to explore legends of human attempts to interfere with creation. One of the best known is that of the Golem, a clay or wooden figure made in man's image (and therefore in God's) who is brought to life when God's name is inserted in its mouth or inscribed on its forehead. The most famous Golem is that of the Rabbi Löw of Prague, who was used as a servant on weekdays but had God's name removed on the Sabbath so that it should rest.

The Golem of Prague was at first of benefit to its community and only later caused problems. On one occasion, Rabbi Löw ended up chasing the Golem around town to prevent it from violating the Sabbath, finally succeeding in catching it in front of the synagogue. As he removed God's name, the Golem fell into pieces; it is rumoured that these are kept in the attic of the Old Synagogue in Prague.

Other similar stories sprung up from other Jewish communities. In a prefiguration of Frankenstein's monster, the Golem of Chelm grew into such a monster that its master was forced to destroy it, again by extracting God's name. Rabbi David Jaffe of Dorhiczyn had a Golem who was meant to work on the Sabbath keeping the fires alight whilst the town was at prayer. However, since he could not be fully controlled, he made a slight error and the town burnt down. In Meshoulam's work, the Golem has been transformed from clay or wood (then the most common materials) to hybrids of flesh and the instruments of technology, TV screens, light bulbs and computers which run riot according to the ancient tradition.

In the same way that Meshoulam updates the legend of the Golem and brings it into the 21st century, he is also inspired by great works of art of the past, but rather than simply copying those he admires, he uses wit and inventiveness to bring them up to date. Many artists have tackled the story of the creation, but in Meshoulam's work on this subject (‘Seven Days’), he depicts a great spiral of creation, showing within its tail the division of dark and light, of land and sea, and the creation of plants and animals. However, the spiral ends not with the depiction of tiny humans, but with the DNA configuration of twenty-two chromosomes in the pattern of a double helix.

The other work which perhaps best illustrates his ingenuity however, is his Astronaut Altarpiece. The work is based on the St Francis Altarpiece by Sassetta, some panels of which can be found in the National Gallery. Episodes in the life of St Francis are echoed by similar scenes from the history of man's exploration of space. Thus, instead of St Francis's dream of a floating palace we have an astronaut meeting a Scientist who dreams of the space shuttle. Similarly where St Francis is recognised by the Pope, the astronaut meets the President and the Saint's taming of the ferocious Wolf of Gubbio becomes the episode when a dog is sent into space.

Where on many an altarpiece the devout pray to the Virgin Mary, Meshoulam , having read of her close link to earlier Mother goddesses, has the earth as seen from the moon for his central image. Above, two astronauts float in space, one with arms and legs akimbo bringing to mind Christ who would normally be found in this position. However, Meshoulam does not only show rejoicing at our progress in space, but suggests that by exploring space we may be impinging on God's territory. This altarpiece ends with the explosion of the Challenger. Below in the predella, he has painted that first attempt at human flight which ended in failure, the story of Icarus which Renaissance moralists used to teach the danger of going to extremes and the virtue of moderation whilst others saw it in a more positive light as symbolising man's questing intellectual spirit. By placing the disaster of Challenger side by side with "Watching the Moon Landing on TV", Meshoulam's Astronaut Altarpiece reminds us how little difference there is between the two.

Jewish Chronicle 7th May 1999 Helen Jacobus
Review of show 'Angels and Demons: Jewish magic and Mysticism' Jewish Museum, Camden Town, London.
Work shown, 'Ezekiel's Chariot'