Miki Kratsman\’s Solo Exhibition
AS IT IS. On Miki Kratsman\’s Photography
MUSAC Museum for Contemporary Art, León, Spain
Curator: Octavio Zaya
28.01.12-03.06.12

AS IT IS. On Miki Kratsman\’s Photography, Musac, Leon Spain, Installation view

Miki Kratsman, IMG_2213 From the Archive, (undated), digital print

Miki Kratsman, Targeted Killing, 2010, digital print, 146X220 cm

Chelouche Gallery is glad to announce the opening of Miki Kratsman\’s solo exhibition AS IT IS. On Miki Kratsman\’s Photography at the MUSAC Museum for Contemporary Art, León, Spain. This is Kratsman\’s first monographic show in a Spanish museum, initiated and organized by The MUSAC and the Curator Octavio Zaya. AS IT IS. On Miki Kratsman\’s Photography will open on Saturday, January 28th and will be ongoing until June 3rd. The exhibition will move to “La Virreina Centre de la Imatge”, Barcelona and will be exhibited there between 23.10.12-13.1.13.

Miki Kratsman is one of Israel\’s highly distinguished press photographers and artist. For over 25 years he has been infinitely committed to seriously documenting the evolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The exhibition AS IT IS brings together nearly 70 photographic prints from different series, which are contrasted and complemented by three large format projections of more than 4,000 images from Kratsman’s archive of journalist photographs. This is the first exhibition to portray such a comprehensive overview exposing the European public to the everyday reality under the Middle-east conflict.

Kratsman\’s photographs never resort to spectacle or exhibitionistic effects. He does not exploit his themes or their subjects. From Kratsman\’s point of view, an accumulated documentation of this difficult daily routine – a routine comprised of different kinds of obstruction, death, memory, hope, insult, anger, hatred or acceptance – is more important, significant and even disquieting than any specific documentation of a potentially spectacular or extreme event. In his photographs, the artist allows us to observe the reality of the occupation through his viewpoint, while also compelling us to question what we see and what we do not see.
Miki Kratsman was born in 1959, Argentina and immigrated to Israel in 1971. His photographs appear regularly in “Ha\’aretz” newspaper in the column “The Twilight Zone” on which he is signed together with the journalist Gideon Levi. Since 2006 he presides as head of the photography department of Bezalel academy of arts, Jerusalem. On 2011 Kratsman received two prestigious awards: Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography at Harvard University; and the other, considered the most important such honor in Israel, the Emet Prize for Science, Art and Culture. Kratsman exhibits consistently, in Israel and throughout the world among them the Venice biennale, the Sao Paulo Biennale and MARCO, Vigo, Spain, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Santiago, Chile, Witte de With, Rotterdam, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art and Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

The exhibition AS IT IS. On Miki Kratsman\’s Photography was Co-produced with Ajuntament de Barcelona and La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, Supported by Artis – Contemporary Israeli Art Fund and the Israel Embassy in Madrid.