Changing Perspectives
The present cluster of exhibitions seeks to view the issue of the relation to "place" in Israeli art. What is the effect of the presence of the artist here in Israel or his absence from it, on the representation of the "Israeli place", of the "here and now? The artistic oeuvre presented in the exhibitions express the tension between an artistic practice that is activist and socio-politically oriented, and one that seeks the realms of dream and fantasy. It seems that the further away an artist is from the pit of the volcano, the more it sparks his interest, and the closer he is, the more urgent is his need to escape.
Nurit David: Two Cities, the Same Island
Guest Artist: Itzhak Golombek
Text: Jenifer Bar Lev
Nurit David confuses "here," which includes the landscapes of Haifa and Tel Aviv, with a classical Japanese "there," insistently attempting to reformulate her family past in terms of a new, glorious fiction. Her new works evince the artist's shift from more traditional figurative painting to illusionist painting, which prefers the flatness of modernism. The series of works shown in the exhibition evoke the sense of a disintegrating, unsettled world.
They are scenes suffused with a mysterious aura – landscapes and architectures of the soul, shimmering with the air of dreams or nightmares, beautiful, disturbing, painful, and haunting. The act of painting becomes a game of conceptual and emotional hide-and-seek, ambiguity lurking in its depths.
Anat Betzer: Sigma Beams
Anat Betzer paints morbid, desolate landscapes populated by thickets, snow-covered woods, or forest cabins. Betzer's "there" is "another place," a remote geography signifying demise. Her romantic-German landscapes seek the darkness and cold that can blot out the Israeli light and sun. They are filled with longing and melancholy, if not anxiety. These scenes evoke a wealth of contexts: on the one hand, a kingdom of European romanticism and Slavic legends; on the other, a world of forests reminiscent of Jewish history and the Holocaust.
Born in Ramat Gan, 1965; lives and works in Tel Aviv
Ronen Siman-Tov: Wilt Thou Perform a Miracle in this Place?
The paintings of Ronen Siman-Tov are a meditation on the riddle of existence and the metaphysical dimension of human life. His interest lies with art that addresses existential and religious questions. Siman-Tov's works depict unknown vistas, proposing a quest into the fields of art and culture. The events they are filled with express the enigma of existence in the face of the universe. They place man against nature, at the border of sky and earth, temporality and infinity.
Hanna Sahar: "Night Watches"
In her series "Night Watches," Hanna Sahar presents a selection of photographs of landscapes not identified as any specific place. She proposes a gaze that is aware of its own limitations in capturing reality. The artist addresses the empty spaces between the revealed and concealed landscape, between existence and absence, memory and oblivion.
Sahar's work refuses to endow territory with a mystical dimension. She chooses to create, in her photographs of Israeli locations – at Tivon or Ga'ash – an illusion of Exilic landscapes, seen by the Zionist Movement as a deviation from the nation's normal life. This choice affords a critical perspective on the mythology of rootedness in Israeli culture.
Born in Tel Aviv, 1966; lives and works in Tel Aviv
Einat Arif-Galanti: Between the Lights
Einat Arif-Galanti addresses the illusion of the control of time and human deeds – an illusion at the heart of modern perception. By changing the rhythm of the events depicted in her works, the artist offers a meditation on man's way of understanding time and existence.
The foundations of a native Israeli identity are juxtaposed in Arif-Galanti's work with Exilic aesthetics. Her works reflect the intuition that the Exilic "there" has become a part of the native "here." It can be claimed that Israeli art today belongs to the Exilic, Diasporic Jew, as a response to the disintegrating myths of rooted Israeliness.
Born in Jerusalem, 1975; lives and works in Jerusalem
Shahar Marcus: "Going, Going, Gone"
The works of Shahar Marcus treat iconic milestones in Israeli culture from a critical, humoristic perspective. His art reflects his personal heritage, alongside references to contexts and sites that are replete with local meaning, while emphasizing their universal aspects.
The works in the show reflect two important motifs that recur in Marcus's art: the treatment of material and mythical layers of local reality, on the one hand, and the treatment of basic food products identified with Israeli life, on the other hand.
Born in Petah Tikva, 1971; lives and works in Tel Aviv
Lilach Bar-Ami: Crossing the Border
Lilach Bar-Ami works in the space between local Israel culture and Japanese culture, between east and west, between myths, landscapes and children's tales that are part of "here," and those that belong "there." At the center of her works are landscapes of the artist's childhood in Hanita, a kibbutz on Israel's northern border. She explores the meanings of the concept of "border" on different levels: on the concrete level, the border denotes the existential threat to those living on the Israeli border; conceptually, the "border" concerns the discourse on the "blurring of borders" – between masculine and feminine, high and low, art and craft, art and commerce, "here" and "there."
Born in Kibbutz Hanita, 1964; lives and works in Tel Aviv