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Native son
Ken Ap tekarr
returns home
with his
first Detroit
exhibition.

.. . ..

...

... : .

"My Parents Say People Are Starving," 1998 (two panels).

SUZANNE CHESSLER
Special to the Jewish News

K

en Aptekar used to attend ser-
vices at Congregation Shaarey
Zedek, but the service that had
the greatest impact on him is
one that he missed. .
Aptekar was at the synagogue the week
before and the week after Rabbi Morris
Adler was gunned down by a young man
who then took his own life at the
Southfield synagogue.
Memories of that decades-ago incident
were jarred a few years ago, when Aptekar
saw a 19th-century portrait and used it as
the basis of his own work as a conceptual
artist. The resulting rendering, It Wasn't My
Brother, will be part of Aptekar's one-man
show, "So What Kind of Name Is That? —
Paintings with Text by Ken Aptekar," run-
ning Sept. 24-Nov. 19 at the Elaine L.
Jacob Gallery in Detroit.
"I wouldn't describe myself as a
painter," says Aptekar, 49, who spends part
of the year in New York and part in Paris.
"I kind of adopt paintings. I'm not making
paintings that nobody ever made before.
"When you're looking at a painting of
mine, you're seeing what is obviously an
interpretation of a historic painting. On
top of that are words, often short narra-
tives, engraved in glass that covers the
painting and is bolted to it. As you look at

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9/1
199

Detroit Jewish News

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