Kafka in Heaven is a site specific installation, created especially for the Chelouche Gallery by the intriguing German artist Volker März.
The installation contains more than 70 clay figurines, alongside new paintings on a small-scale size, depicting Kafka's confrontation with the Israeli reality until, finally, he arrives in heaven. The dissonance between the vision of the Ideal State of Israel in Jewish-European thought, and a violent, turbulent reality of our days, at times absurd, at times depressing, is unfolded through a myriad of quasi-documentary, quasi-fictive means, which together constitute a rich, far-fetched, absurd, and thought-provoking space.
The exhibition is accompanied by März's new recently published book: KAFKA IN ISRAEL. (Published by Verlag fuer moderne kunst Nuremberg, 224 pages)
Volker März works is a multi-disciplinary artist working as a sculptor, painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performer and musician. He realized several Projects und Performances dedicated to European philosophers and thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Giordano Bruno, Martin Heidegger, Heinrich von Kleist, Marquis de Sade, George Bataille, Peter Sloterdijk, Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, Hans Henny Jahnn, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann and Hannah Arendt.
März (b. 1957), lives and works in Berlin, exhibits solo shows across Europe since 1995, published more than 10 Artist's books, and participated in numerous group shows, among it at Kunstverein Mannheim, Martin Gropius Bau Berlin, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein and Haus am Waldsee, Berlin.
This is the second solo show in Israel Volker März, following his show Kafka in Israel that was exhibited at Herzliya Museum of contemporary art, earlier this year.
The preceding working premise was that Franz Kafka did not die in 1924 at the age of 40, but rather arrived at the shores of Palestine and has been living in Tel Aviv ever since. At the current show it is the end of Kafka in Israel: Kafka is arrested and killed by the authorities.
