Starting the new year with some really interesting, eclectic and educational new exhibitions in Jerusalem! Don’t miss these three shows which span a wide variety of mediums, artists and ideas. Experience the Jerusalem art scene on an Oh So Arty tour.
I.
Exhibition: Placeless: Following Jacqueline Kahanoff
Artist: Group Show
Venue: Musrara New Gallery, HaAyin Het St. 9
Dates: Until February 24th
Part of Musrara’s Photopoetics event which spans three exhibitions connecting visual arts with prolific Israeli literary works, Placeless: Following Jacqueline Kahanoff, follows the writing and thought of Jacqueline Kahanoff, focusing on the search for identity in the Mediterranean expanse, while looking at notions of Eastern and Western, antagonism versus fluidity and hybridity, belonging and not belonging. A writer and essayist, Kahanoff sought to define multiculturalism as a world view and a way of living, long before the postmodern discourse. Alongside Kahanoff’s texts, the artists who were invited to participate in the exhibition explore, each in his or her own way, the possibility of presenting a personal voice and the ability to capture memory and cultural identity.
Image: Dafna Shalom, “Press Plants (Book of Exodus), photograph, 2018.
II.
Exhibition: Victory Over The Sun: Russian Avant Garde and Beyond
Artist: Group Show
Venue: Israel Museum, Ruppin Blvd. 12
Dates: Until July 2019.
The first comprehensive exhibition on the subject in Israel, Victory Over The Sun will explore avant-garde trends in Russian art during the 20th century. Beginning with Kazimir Malevich’s radical revolution in art prior to the year 1920, the exhibition emphasizes his Suprematist period and its significant influence on generations of prominent artists up to the present day. This is followed by an exploration of Nonconformist Art that emerged after Stalin's death, and the exhibition’s epilogue addresses the legacy of each of these movements in the works of contemporary artists, highlighting the continuity of the avant-garde tradition.
Image: Pavel Pepperstein, El Lizzitzky’s Autostrada in the Alps in 2401, watercolor on paper, 2017.
III.
Exhibition: Carry That Weight
Artist: Group Show
Venue: Jerusalem Artists’ House
Dates: Until March 9th.
The exhibition Carry that Weight explores the image of a youth carrying an animal on his shoulders, regarding the image as something which passes from hand to hand, like a commodity or a currency that crosses worlds, cultures, and periods, and changes meanings and contents. The works of the 21 participating Israeli artists extend from the 1950s to the present and introduce a lively dialogue with the image, bifurcating into diverse narratives. The works range from the shepherd figure to father-son relations, through allusions to the Sacrifice of Isaac portraying death and bereavement, as well as different representations of masculinity -- other works allude to feminine aspects, as well as to different types of burdens and the implications of the carried load on the body.
Image: Galia Pasternak, Plenty, Love, Rachel, oil on canvas, pastels and ink on paper, 2013