Moonshine
The opening exhibition of 2023 in Chelouche Gallery’s new space is the exhibition of the artist Gideon Gachtman (1942 – 2008), one of the pillars of Israeli art, and Michelangelo Pistoletto (born in 1933). Both have been among Chelouche’s artists for over three decades. Gachtman, one of the leading Israeli artists and the pioneers of […]
Passage International No.2
“Passage” International Art Encounters Project No.2 Nira Itzhaki The joint exhibition between the British artist David Mach and the Israeli artist Zadok Ben-David is the second in a series of international “Passage” encounters at the Chelouche Gallery for Contemporary Art. The project, which started in November 1996 in cooperation with Dr. Lóránd Hegyi, the director […]
Training House
The exhibition includes an installation in the gallery space and a video work (Tekken).
The installation deals with the gallery space by transforming it into blunt substitute surroundings aesthetically wise as well as iconologically: the walls of the gallery was painted bright, oily red and on the floor a syntactical grass carpet was spread. Onto the grass invade a wall installation that is bound by the walls of a large greenhouse. The work is a dismantled and reconstructed image, of the artists siting, each with her leg put in cast, resting on a bench. From each side of the siting image of the artists a speaker plays the song Lighthouse, by the master of 50's Israeli music, the late Shoshana Damari.
The video work Tekken draws from the popular “Mash-up” culture. This is a combination, or a collage, of historical films that documented the life of the citizens in the early years of the state of Israel, scenes from Hollywood movies from he same period, digital computer games, animation and image from the history of art.
The works in the exhibition Training House deal with relations between the natural and the artificial, the privacy of the house and the public front, the national identity and the enlightened cosmopolitan model. It deals with the fixation in which we live in, and the conflict between the attraction to the kitsch and the synthetic from one side and the gender – determined national subjective identity from the other side.
The Ground on Which I Stand
The Ground on Which I Stand
Nir Alon | Gazmend Ejupi
Curator: Michele Robecchi
24.03.11 – 07.05.11
'It is difficult to disassociate one part of my life from another. I have strived to live it all seamless … art and life together, inseparable and indistinguishable. The ideas I discovered and embraced in my youth when my idealism was full blown I have not abandoned in middle age when idealism is something less the blooming, but wisdom is starting to bud. The ideas of self-determination, self-respect and self-defense that governed my life in the ’60s I find just as valid and self-urging today.’
Augustine Wilson, The Ground on Which I Stand, 1996
‘The Ground on Which I Stand’ is an exhibition investigating the impossibility of separating art and life and how their relationship is fundamental in shaping our vision of society. The title is based on a speech given by the great American playwright August Wilson (1945-2005) on the occasion of the Theatre Communications National Conference in New York in 1996. A key part of Wilson’s statement was about the difficulties he was having in separating his concerns with theatre from his concerns of his life as an African-American.
The two artists exhibiting in ‘The Ground on Which I Stand’, Nir Alon and Gazmend Ejupi, share with Wilson an interest in theatrical forms of representation as well as a constant research of an identity. Both have a hard time defining the concept of home (Alon was born in Israel from a Kosovar mother, and lives in Germany; Ejupi was born in Kosovo, and lives in London) and live a cultural and geographical duality that, if on the one hand it had enriched their lives, on the other hand it had the unexpected side effect of relegating their private world to a secondary role. This issue is not confined to their career only, but it is extended to their life too, with the multi-faceted aspects of their background pigeonholing them in a cliquish position where their personal views are often overlooked in favor of their political ones.
This hybrid identity generated a sense of perennial displacement, which is reflected in their practice. Alon’s sculptures are the result of a dialogue between the artist and the place in which he is invited to show. Made of materials collected on site, such as books and pieces of furniture, they challenge the notion of the artist’s research as an area detached from the viewer, inviting to interaction and sharing while showcasing aspects of the culture in which the work is exhibited and their relationship with the artist.
Gazmend Ejupi’s video installations are somehow complementary to Alon’s practice. They are moments in time and space, snapshots of the artist’s memory focused on daily life episodes like a power black out at his parents’ flat or a couple of friends sitting in a narrow space engaged in conversation. These reports of the mood of the city where he was born are filtered through a close/distant perspective, indirectly examining the environmental and social changes which naturally define transition periods in life. By capturing unwillingly weaknesses and strengths of people as individuals and the society as a whole, Ejupi’s videos deal mostly with his personal story. Shot within one single frame, they are like moving paintings, revealing the artist’s predilection for one of the most traditional art forms while conceptually transcending the readymade-documentary style they initially were part of.
In Alon and Ejupi’s work there is no sanctification of the ordinary, nor any form of narrative. Brought together by the choice of investigating their own identity, and the desire of doing so by dealing with daily objects and situations, they adopt different representational modes, which go from spatial openness to claustrophobia. Human presence and geographical provenience, two themes central in both artists’ practice, are here mostly noticeable for their intangible presence.
Issues like diversity, nostalgia and absence are addressed in a way that deliberately undermines cultural and geographical belonging. The fine but relevant separating lines between personal and collective, territorial and affectionate, are explored at its full, inviting the audience to take a step that goes beyond the perception dictated by these notions and getting a better understanding of the ground on which we stand.
Text by Michele Robecchi
Passage International No.1
Passage International Art Encounters
Project No.1
Nira Itzhaki
“Passage” is a project where the exhibition space becomes international, with no borders, where Israeli artists meet artists from aboard, who create in a similar artistic language. It is an international meeting-point to which galleries, curators, museum directors, art critics, artists and collectors are invited to hold a two-way dialogue, share ideas and hold joint exhibitions.
“Passage” is intended to be a regularly recurring artistic event which is lively and exciting, where the parallels of time and space meet and new artistic connections are created in a dynamic structure of cultural processes and artistic cultural memory.
This forum is a continuation of the Chelouche Gallery activities during bthe past years of exchanging artists and exhibitions and of participating in international art events in order to expand the possibilities of art shows and holding a genuine dialogue, in real time, in the international art world.
The joint exhibition of the Israeli artist Motti Mizrachi and the Frrench artist Patrick Raynaud, which takes place as part of the project “Passage”, is realised together with Dr. Lóránd Hegyi, the director of the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna.
“Passage”: Motti Mizrachi and Patrick Raynaud
Dr. Lóránd Hegyi
Materiality and immateriality, body and mind, struggle and transcendental peace, and concurrently, the disturbing ambivalence of coexisting banal, simple objects and spiritual signs characterize the works of Motti Mizrachi and Patrick Raynaud. The constant latent tension, the feeling of being self-dependent, the signs which indicate dangers and the dramatic presence of sensual objects which sensitize yhe different perceptions – connecting between a strong and intentionally heightened feeling of the body and the intellectual contexts – these moments can be found with both artists. Just as amazing is the dialogue with light as a metaphora, which, as a catalys connects the different refrences with signal systems. In this manner a “passage” is created where the artist can wangle between sophisticated culture and the banal ordinary culture, in search of his place and role.
Dout and conviction, intellectual restlessness and harmony, skepticism and belief, fragility and monumentality, transitoriness and timelessness all exist side by side and are unseparable in the artistic situation of the “passage”, where people meet, languages mix, cultural archetypes are confronted with the bright reality of the aimless, spontaneous lack of involvement.
The life of the “passage” has no objective and will, is true and discernible; it is at the same time heavy and light, irresponsible and suffering, accidental and fateful, reality and illusion. This almost unbearable complexity and ambivalence stands at the center of Motti Mizrachi and Patrick Raynaud offers an interpretation process, where the observer does not only see the “passage” as the natural place of the artist, but can also realize his own dialogues and confrontations.
Passage International No.4
“Passage” International Art Encounters
Project No.4
Nira Itzhaki
the joint exhibition between the Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto and the Israeli artist Micha Ullman is the fourth in a series of international “Passage” encounters at the Chelouche Gallery for Contemporary Art.
The project, which started in November 1996 in cooperation with Dr. Lóránd Hegyi, the director of the Vienna Museum of Modern Art, gives emphasis to the global exhibition space which becomes increasingly cosmopolitan and without borders, and serves as a venue for artists, who create in an adjacent, communicating and analogue language. This is a continuous artistic event, which strives to expand the exhibition possibilities by organizing joint exhibitions and carrying out a genuine real time dialog.
In this exhibition an interesting encounter is created between two international artists of the same generation, who combine local cultures with universal values.
Ullman, who has its roots in Israeli-Jewish tradition, is engaged with local identity since the 70's, and over the years changed the local element into universal besides being constantly attached to everyday life. Past and present are also important elements in Pistoletto's oeuvre, whose roots are in the Italian tradition. Two different and parallel cultures meet in one exhibition, and surprisingly have many things in common.
Ullman's sand tables facing Pistoletto's mirror works: The evasive and transitory reality, the doubt, the question and the uncertainty which raise apropos of observing and presentation modes; the connection between past and present and the flow of time – are all distinctly raised issues in the dialog between both artists. The involvement and reflection of the spectator in Pistoletto's mirrors as well as in Ullman's works, who in the past years has also incorporated glass into his work (Mirror in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Library in Berlin, East in the Israel Museum, and the sand tables in the current exhibition), has made the spectator an inseparable part of these works.
Future joints between both artists are the reflections, beauty and elegance on the one hand, and the Harsh, Sensual and Meditative on the other hand.
Ullman presents two glass-covered sand tables (Negative 1, Negative 2). Red sand is thrown from the ceiling and function as a light, “illuminating” and marking the traces of the tableware and the objects. The sand is the negative of the camera film and the missing photograph, i.e. the positive, is the memory, whereas the developing of the film is carried out in the spectator's imagination. The tables are covered with glass, sealed and impenetrable, denying any access. An isolation-creating situation, as shown in the Library in Berlin, or in last year's installation Sanday that was exhibited in the artists workshops in Tel Aviv. The work itself exists in the spectator's imagination. Pistoletto's mirror reflecting the spectator, and the mirrors which face each other also create an impenetrable world, which exist only in the spectator's imagination.
The mirrors work shown by Pistoletto in this exhibition (Divided Mirror, Corner Mirror, Crown of Mirrors), deals with the dimensions of space and time. The real space behind the spectator becomes part of the fictitious space in the mirror/ thus, the mirror becomes the venue of both the physical and fictitious reality.
Both artists occupy themselves with the changes occurring in the perspective; with the inversions of interior-exterior, positive-negative; with undermining the reality and distoring the spectator's ability to see in a given space. Ullman's pit works created in the 70's mark the beginning of this process through which the artist changed the spectator's observing perspective. Then came the pit work performed by the artist in the 1980 Venice Biannale; the chair sculptures; the Library in Berlin (covered with glass, denying the spectator's entrance, reflecting the surroundings and the movement of the spectator, who stands on top of it) up to the Sanday installation.
Pistoletto has begun to engage in the mirror perspective, in which every direction is being reversed, in the 60's. His woks deal with the relationships between the figure painted on the mirror and the spectator. It deals also with the reflection of the spectator in the painting, as well as with the movement which gathers past and future up to the point where their existence is not certain any more.
The relationship between the painted object and its reflection induces an endless “creation” of mirror paintings. The past and the present merge and overlap one another on the surface of the painting. The mirror paintings turn to be the venue between oneness and multiplicity, past and future. The place where opposites meet becomes also the venue of the multiplication and the division of reality as being reflected in the mirror. In the pictures one can see forward backward at the same time.
In this exhibition everything turns to be a part of everything, everything is reflected in everything, Ullman's works are reflected in those of Pistoletto's, and the spectator' being reflected in everything, becomes himself a walking “sculpture” in the gallery.
Both artists share the emotional and spiritual, as well as the physical and sensual experience. The perception of the passing moment in relation to the eternal on the one hand, and the tension between the concept and the action on the other hand, create remarkably exiting moments in this exhibition.
Passage International No.5
Passage International No.5
Nira Itzhaki
The joint exhibition of the Portuguese artist Pedro Cabrita Reis and the Israeli artist Gal Weinstein is the 5th project in the series of Passage: International Art Encounters, taking place at the Chelouch Gallery for Contemporary Art.
This exhibition’s mutual installation comprised of works by both artists keeps a dialogue with the architectonic structure of the gallery. Not only has it transformed the entire space, but made the space an integral part of the work. Pedro Cabrita Reis (born 1956 in Lisbon, Portugal) has erected four red silicate pillars which join floor and ceiling. Three of them had been broken by violent hammer blows which made them look like archeological debris of part of a construction site. To the fourth pillar, which stands opposite to the Gallery’s entrance, a glass jug full of water is adhered with brown tape stripes. In another space within the gallery Cabrita Reis placed three large paintings. Gal Weinstein (born 1970 in Israel) has hung white transparent silicone drapes (sweeping the floor) and thus creating a magnificent transparent, illuminated curtain. They divide the gallery’s space into three smaller spaces, in which the pillars and Cabrita Reis’ paintings are placed.
The real space behind the silicone drapes turns into part of an imaginary space existing in the spectator’s eyes, whereas the drape becomes the meeting place of the physical and the imaginary reality.
The silicone drapes, resembling waterfalls or shining transparent beds, function as territory definers. The spectator has to decide whether or not to become physically involved in the work. The passage between the silicon drapes, which enable the movement from one space into another, turns the spectator into an active participant in the installation.
Cabrita Reis’ brick pillars and Weinstein’s silicone drapes deal with the relationship between art and architecture within the space and time dimensions, and raise questions about reality “fooling” space as well as doubts and uncertainty evoked by different viewing possibilities.
Both artists have chosen simple everyday objects and materials such as silicate bricks and silicone, which lack any special identity, and used them as components of their architectonic structures – sensuous and spiritual at the same time.
In their theatrical style, their humor, irony and lack of functionality both artists share a common language. The reflections, beauty and elegance contrasting the rigidity, sensuality and meditativeness create additional joints between these artists. Both deal with the deceptiveness of perspective, as well as the contrasts shown by inside-outside, positive-negative relations, and both attempt to weaken reality and blur the capacity of the spectator to see the real space.
The dialogue between both artists in this mutual exhibition within the framework of the passage series is so perfect, that the spectator could not distinguish one from another, for their work merges into one. This exhibition, in which everything becomes part of everything, creates a new range of associations open to various commentary and observation modes. This is the moment when the spectator moves from reality into a quasi non-site of a Zenic spirit of existence of its own.
Passage International No.6
Passage: International Art Encounters
Project No. 6
Nira Itzhaki
The joint exhibition of the Spanish artist Jaume Plensa and the Israeli artist Nir Alon is the 6th project in the series of Passage: International Art Encounters, taking place at the Chelouche Gallery for Contemporary Art.
At this exhibition Jaume Plensa (born 1955 in Barcelona, Spain) presents an installation of round, bronze gongs lit in the center and floating in the Gallery's space. Two pairs of words are engraved in the middle of each gong: “water-fire” – “hair-bold”. A drumstick is hanging near each gong and the visitors become active drummers i.e. participants in the installation. Each gong has its specific sound and when hit, a sequence of different sounds is sent into the air, onto the visitor's body and Gallery walls. In another corner Plensa hung a sculpture made of blown glass drops hanging from a white cloth. The feeling of hovering, the lightness of the glass in contrast to the rigidity of the bronze, the dramatic use of the light, the gongs' sounds floating in the gallery's space altogether create a sensual dreamy, enchanting and theatrical ambience.
Next to him, Nir Alon (born 1964 in Tel Aviv, Israel) presents a sculptural installation comprised of two objects: the first – “Observational Learning” – consisting of a desk painted in white, held by 2 office lamps, the one supporting and the other balancing it. The lamps illuminate drawings outlined directly on the wall. The second object – “Applied Behavior” – consists of a perambulator wrapped in masking tape, which simultaneously supports and is supported by an office lamp that illuminates the perambulator's seat.
The inner light source creates a shadow, which by withdrawing from the works disentangles from the object. At the same time the illumination creates a shadow that defines the object, which causes the physical object to dismantle, leaving an imaginary space in the wall.
Jaume Plensa and Nir Alon create a genuine dialogue, which enriches them through their differences as well as their similarities. The affinity between both artists appears not only through the sound and the theatrical light that defines its surroundings, but also through their placement and installment, which creates an elevation (by means of hovering). The use of light and shadow causes the works to be a bit floating and slightly disengaged from the immediate surroundings, as though it was a fantastic reverie. On the one hand the light makes the work distinct, and on the other hand causes its isolation. The abundance of “disengaged” works finally creates a hovering, illusionary, dreamy and somnambulant environment, which can be interpreted as detachment from reality, autistic- or astronaut-like – disengaged, but at the same time also looking down, floating, receiving and transmitting some kind of essential, focused and principal matter.
Both artists are somewhat theatrical in their approach in the sense of creating scenes (similar to those in “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland(Dreamland)/Through the Looking-Glass” etc.). Thus, the exhibition turns into a quasi-theatrical performance, in which the scenery is detached from the immediate reality, yet reacts and is related to it.
The acquaintance with the installation is made by way of walking through it. Its location in the space determines both movement and sound. The act of watching through the body creates a sensual-physical definition. Both artists build an environment in which there is equal place for both the visitor and space, but whereas Plensa invites the spectator to take part in his work, Alon creates a quasi-theater, leaving the spectator outside.
PhotoFilm – Installation
The installation 'PhotoFilm' includes 34 photographs that have been taken by the two artists, in the previous two years at several hospitals. The installation intervenes in the gallery space and recreates it as a waiting place, as a roving place. The space of the gallery had been taken and became a long corridor, hermetic unit of space and time that dictates to the visitor ways of seeing and behaving in a pre-signified orbit.
Pictures are hanged along the corridor's walls, sequences of hospital photographs: a planter, a plant, hung picture, curtain, foot, television, signboard and window jamb. These are photographs of an un-hierarchical gaze. Shots that reveal a narrative of waiting, of aimless gazing and of a passive wondering eye.
Mali and Smadar's act of photography is performed by intimate knowing of the place, and of the waiting person's place in public sphere called hospital. The act of photography is done from and about the silence of the place, from and about the muteness of the situation. The silence of this space is one that is accomplished by mechanism of blocking and concealment of sickness, through barring of the gaze and the body, and through decorated aesthetic. A tolerated visibility, apparently familiar.
The place dictates the visible, and the blocked eye – like the act of photography – finds itself in a situation of roving and glancing. For all that silence, Mali and Smadar offer a possibility for a different gaze – other gaze- in their installation. A possibility that doesn’t confront with the power of the place over the hospitalized or its visitor, but rather goes to the edge of the place: to the passages, to the corridors, to the waiting rooms. The roving eye, walking back and forth in a place, is asking to fill the lack of words. The photograph, like the gaze, is not hierarchic, sometimes intentional, sometimes passive and sometimes blind.
The disturbance and contradiction that exist in the waiting space are becoming present by the preserving of the order and aesthetic of this hetrotopic place, in the installation. A presence that leaves the visitor – in the hospital as well as in the installation – in a state of unease and disconcert.
Happy Moments of Balance II
Nir Alon and Ben Kadishman
“Happy Moments of Balance II”
22.3.18 – 5.5.18
Nir Alon and Ben Kadishman's exhibition, “Happy Moments of Balance II” at Chelouche Gallery, draws together aspects from their first joint exhibition in 1995 at the Israel Museum entitled, “Happy Moments of Balance”.
Alon and Kadishman's works touch upon their most sensitive experience of new parenthood and express the impact their children's lives and actions. The art works presented in this exhibition translate the paternal feelings of each artist onto works of art. This is exemplified through the container which is balanced on bulbs, creating juxtaposition between objects, emphasizing the ability of the artists to manipulate ready-made objects and form new ones which then alter the surroundings. The sculptures are transformed and reinvented, imbued with both the simplicity and immediacy of the camera obscura, presenting notions of balance and instability. The Idea of the innocence of a child's gaze is channeled through the works of art which are bound together with a paternal insight and knowledge.
This exhibition is not a recreation of older materials (containers, print works, photography and bulbs). Rather it expresses an amalgamation of a 22 year joint artistic partnership and vision. The works attempt to examine the perspectives of a both parents and children through the delicate relationships created through the objects that are obscurely hinged to one another.
There is a sense of delicate balance, fragile and nearly impossible. The works displayed attempt to channel the viewers gaze to a pre-adolescent, child-like view emphasized through the playful and raw structure of the works. The moment the gaze “fails” it becomes critical.
Fragments
Fragments | Tal Amitai-Lavi and Amir Tomashov
curator: Shir Meller-Yamaguchi
…Traveling to the depth of subtlety
and along its width
Towards a hidden thread that is almost
invisible to the soul's eyes
and it is the most thin
that could ever be and still exist
a line that its breadth is a wink between
existence and void…
(Jacob Raz, Thus I have Heard, (Hebrew, free translation), (Modan, 1996), p.79.)
According to the French scientist Lavoisier “Nothing is created, nothing is extinguished…” (Antoine Lavoisier, Traité élémentaire de chimie (Paris: Chez Cuchet, 1789)) . However, we are bound by ideas of construction and destruction, clinging to the one and fearing the other. Actually, the process of disintegration, in which form is freed of a given body and returns to the void, is already potentially inherent in every substance and in every form. Tal Amitai-Lavi and Amir Tomashov draw our attention to the perishable nature of existence – a chronicle of a destruction foretold.
The Greek word “Chaos” translates to “the origin of all that exists”. The shifts between chaos and order have been happening both in nature and in human culture since the dawn of age: wars, political and social revolutions, natural disasters (earthquakes, fires and volcanic eruptions). All these seem threatening, destructing and as part of the collapse of the existing order, but in fact, a steady condition never exists, not even for a moment. Disruption, disturbance and destruction are natural transformations that enable change and even recreation.
Themes of disintegration, disasters and collapse have been a significant feature of Tal Amitai-Lavi’s works. They have also determined her choices of images and fragile materials: sand, soda powder or sewing thread. These materials are extremely sensitive, demanding cautious and tender care, thus transforming destruction into an inseparable part of her creation process. Amitai-Lavi collects from the media photographs of natural disasters such as earthquakes, collapsed houses, cut-off electrical wires and fall down trees. She draws every detail of their remains with supreme accuracy using a black thread on a transparent surface. It is as though she is trying to freeze the moment before they will vanish, but the edges of the unraveled threads beside the destructed buildings highlight the human inability to prevent these events.
Another series by Amitai-Lavi is made of thin shreds of baking soda. These were consolidated by glue into a dismantled twig-like texture, resembling a forest or a turn lace texture. The artist cautiously lays down the thin twig’s shreds on top of a black velvet surface, creating a kind of crumbling jewel emphasizing the beauty of the ephemeral by pausing to look at it, a reminder of “Memento Mori”, the perishable nature of existence.
The sand works are the most recent and most challenging. Easily disintegrating, image and background merge one into another. In fact, they are reliefs simultaneously appearing and disappearing in the sand, reminiscent of an archeological excavation in which the artist restored some of the natural disasters. Thus for instance, The Great Wave by Hokusai – the tsunami that threatened to drown fishermen boats – is fading into the crumbling sand. The recreation of chaotic situations in small scales and fragile materials allows Amitai-Lavi to cope with their inherent existential anxiety.
Although trained as an architect, Amir Tomashov sees destruction as inherent to every construction process. Building structures is one of the first characteristics of every civilization and embodies the striving for order, stability and constancy. In one of his books Paul Auster examines the concept of “house”: “At what moment does a house stop being a house? When the roof is taken off? When the windows are removed? When the walls are knocked down? At what moment does it become a pile of rubble?” (Paul Auster, The Invention of Solitude (New York: Penguin, 1982), p. 22.)
Tomashov is presenting here three series that address these questions. In the first he focuses on the foundation stone – the brick, the basic unit of a structure, in which lies an endless potential for him. Supposedly, the brick is just one of many in a pile of bricks – construction leftovers laying one over the other in a mix, with no order or architectural planning. However, the artist’s gentle drawings and paper-cuts make the bricks’ presence airy and almost invisible in space, and manage to salvage the poetic from the mundane. The bricks become weightless and fade into the void. Lao Tzu writes about the space as a main part of the house:
…In its emptiness, there is the function of a container
Cut open doors and windows to create a room
In its emptiness, there is the function of a room…
(Lao Tzu, “verse 11: Emptiness”, in: Tao Te Ching, trans. Derek Lin (Vermont: Skylight Paths, 2007))
.
The series of cranes is composed of drawings sketched on book covers whose pages were turn, depicting the bare skeleton frame of a building. The construction’s leverage stops when the string that descends from the top of the crane “wishes” to lift the building high above. It is cut in that same wounded spine of the book cover, as though the fate of the future-building was written in these missing pages. Tomashov is pointing to the city as a mechanism that has an unceasing hunger for construction, while destruction already lies at its corner.
Another series in which Tomashov is making post-traumatic models of a destroyed city refer to familiar situations from the painful reality – a war or a devastating explosion. The collapsed buildings are reminiscent of a faded promise – the house as a delusion of safety and constancy. The small scale, the high viewpoint from which we see the model, and the white color inducing a sense of distance to the scenes – all dim the difficulty that is entailed in sights of destruction, and enable one to treat loss as just one other page in history, filled with cities built one on top of each other’s ruins.
…And there is nothing that will remain on its neighbor
there is no base for anything to remain on,
It all begins again… (Jacob Raz, Ibid, p. 29.)
Shir Meller-Yamaguchi, May 2019
Experiment in Forecasting the Mood
Experiment in Forecasting the Mood
Pinchas Zinovich and Asaf Rahat
Curator: Yaniv Shapira
31.08.2012-11.10.2012
The title 'Experiment in Forecasting the Mood' originates from the name of one of the works presented at the mutual exhibition of Pinchas Zinovich and Assaf Rahat. The title succeeds in portraying the underline spirit of the exhibition, which draws its strength from the baring of the soul and its visual representation.
The works of Pinches Zinovich (1943-2007) are characterized with confidant hand gestures that fill the entire area of the canvas whilst being restrain and self reflection. At the backbone of his oeuvre, stands a painting that is both “revealing and concealing”, is candid but enigmatic, self proclaimed whilst keeping a secret. From the mid 80's, the black has increasingly taken on a centric role in Zinovich's pallet as means to convey feelings of melancholy and somberness. On the dialectics between the strong colorfulness of his paintings and the black, Zinovich illuminated: “it is not like that of Matisse in 'Le Bonheur de Vivre', rather, it serves as a covering of the black”. Zinovich's abstract works are “landscapes of the soul”, which one of the keys for their interpretation is in-bedded in their titles. In 'Halleluyah (What to Think)' (2000-2004), presented in this current exhibition, he sets his hope with a praise, however, he immediately clasp to the despairing doubt. The group of works taken from the series 'the Time of the Flesh' (2003-2004) indicate the question of the material character of the body and of finiteness, which bring to the surface suppressed anxieties, fears and oppressive feelings.
Assaf Rahat's (born 1970) works shown at the exhibition carry on his previous series, in which he presented images deriving from the mental realm of dreams, visions and memories. Amongst his memorable artworks are images of fetuses in a womb-like protected space, alongside amorphous and biomorphic shapes, suggesting the beginning of life. The large paper sheets in front of us were made at once, with “quick, intuitive and aggressive hand gesture”. This way of action enables him to capture the 'moment', 'feel' and 'emotion', that otherwise might not be obtainable. Rahat inhabits his recent works with hybrid-like creations of sculls and human heads next to winged animals, fish and snakes, which create a dark surrealistic world. Alongside these, appear deformed references to 'Where is Pluto', childish rubber duckies and other allusions, which indicate a secret kept with childhood innocents.
The presentation of Zinovich's and Rahat's works one next to the other reveals a surprising resemblance between Zinovich's “emotional abstract” and Rahat's “mental expressionism”, in painting that derives from private experiences and personal biographies. For a moment, it seems that they posses the emotional quality best described by Edvard Munch, when he stated “By placing paint and drawing lines and shapes that appear to be painted in a rash state, I was looking for a way to transform this state of mind to vibrate as a gramophone record”. The fact these two are from different generations of Israeli art allows to follow a local painting that asks to release itself from the grip of the 'immediate'- both from the social and political aspect as well as the 'realness'- of landscape painting, urban landscape or still life; an expression that seeks, if only for a brief hour, to turn the gaze into the depth of the human soul.
Yaniv Shapira
Gallery Talk with artist Assaf Rahat and curator Yaniv Shapira, 05.10.2012
On the second floor of Chelouche Gallery, the exhibition 'Graduates 2012'- Sapir Art School graduate exhibition.
31.08.2012 – 07.09.2012
Opening: 31.08.2012, 12:00 noon.
Curators: Naomi Aviv and Danny Yahav Brown.
In the exhibition 'Graduates 2012', which will run for one week, one can identify a deceptive dialect perhaps borrowed from a discipline of decoding the surface – Archeology or Geology; an insightful look in the graduates' works will reveal an effort to “dig” underneath the surface, understand the past, and make a materialistic or metaphoric use of it. To move backwards only to make it possible to withdraw forward – to create interactions on a broad time line.
CREDENZA
CREDENZA
A dual show
Gideon Gechtman | Dana Yoeli
Opening: 3/11 at 20:00
This exhibition is a platform for a first grand meeting between two artists who deal with the emotional code of the object, and the implications of casting content in it from a national and political perspective. The connection between these two artists, from different generations and diverse backgrounds, strengthens the political dimension of nostalgia and memory stored in the art works.
Chelouche gallery offers a retrospective look into the fascinating body of works produced by Gideon Gechtman shown alongside Dana Yoeli, contemporary artist working on the same wavelength as Gechtman. A platform that provides space to a visual dialogue deeply related to our consumerist society, questioning how this very same affects the individual from a physical and mental prospective.
CREDENZA is a living room side commode, originally invented in Italy, used to display decorative items and always associated with a wooden design, a decorative stage for decoration only.
You Do Not Know
Includes a series of eight photographs which where processed through a computer and the 5 minuets long video- High Noon
