Among the featured artists are well-known figures, such as Sigalit Landau, Aernout Mik, Su-Mei Tse, Micha Ullman, Paloma Varga Weiss, together with emerging talents, such as Johanna Billing, Michael Borremans, Cao Fei, and others.
"This exhibition reflects a multiplicity of novel approaches, including installation and other new media, by some forty contemporary artists from within Israel and from other countries, whose work the Museum collects with equal commitment,"Â states James Snyder, Anne and Jerome Fisher Director of the Israel Museum. "This kind of global embrace resonates with the Museum's collecting mission, which, in its short forty-year history, has amassed holding unique in their range, from prehistoric archaeology, through Jewish ceremonial art, to the visual arts of Western and non-Western cultures, and from earliest recorded history to works created in our own times."
Highlights from the exhibition include the video installation Organic Escalator (2000), by Dutch artist Aernout Mik, screened in a tunnel-like space that slowly shifts back and forth, linking and confusing the viewer's physical experience of the fictitional space of the real space of the viewer's physical experience. Turkish artist Servet Kocyigit's c-print, The Bric-a-Brac seller, (2005) juxtaposes the backdrop of a shantytown with the aura that emanates from a chandelier that the man offers on sale. Israeli artist Erez Israeli's installation of an artificial meadow sprinkled with poppies made from tiny glass pearls, Fields of Flowers (2005), alludes to the short life cycle of the poppy and to the fragility of glass and conveys the message that this beauty, too, is fleeting. The limewood bust by German artist Paloma Varga Weisz, Head Portrait (2005), recalls well-recognized attributes of Late Gothic art, but replaces its anticipated subject of a pious noblewoman with a portrait of the artist herself.
"Building a collection that stays at the cutting edge of contemporary art, and doing so in a way that integrates the best of Israeli's contemporary creativity with developments worldwide, is one of the major Museum's collecting challenges. From our unique perspective between the eastern and western worlds. This is an especially fascinating journey of discovery,"Â says Suzanne Landau, Chief Curator of the Arts at the Israel Museum and curator of the exhibition.
The exhibition is made possible by The Jack N. and Lilyan Mandel Fund, The Joseph C. And Florence Mandel Fund, The Morton L. and Barbara Mandel Fund, and the donors to the Museum's 2006 Exhibition Fund. On View at The Israel Museum Through February 15, 2007. -- www.imj.org.il
Posted January 16th, 2007 by ruzik_tuzik
