“Back to Reality” was the New Barbizon collective’s first solo institutional show in Europe, presenting a new body of work developed during a residency at De Appel. The New Barbizon collective was founded in 2010 by five painters born in the former USSR, who live and work in Israel. The painters are committed to rendering an ever changing reality through drawing and painting from direct observation in works that speak to layered forms of belonging, from dissident Soviet pasts to Israeli presents, as well as to a tradition of art making that cuts against the grain of contemporary conceptual dogmas. New Barbizon collective members include Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi, Maria Pomiansky, Anna Lukashevsky, Olga Kundina, and Natalia Zourabova.