Three new exhibits opened at the Ashdod Art Museum on June 25, 2011.
Here are the details from the press release:
Israeli Avant-garde in its Infancy – Young Israeli Artists of the 1970s
Collection: Yonah Fisher
The exhibition, which involves the avant-garde of the 1970s, will present the works of some of the outstanding avant-garde artists who worked in Israel in the 1970s, and will be presented in two parts: Part 1 will open in June and part 2 in October 2011. Each part will stage various artists and trends of the period.
In June around 80 works by various artists including Daganit Barset, Tamar Getter, Moshe Gershoni, Michael Drucks, Pinchas Cohen Gan, Rafi Levi, Michal Ne’eman and Motti Mizrachi will be displayed.
Each one of the artists will be presented in an independent space as a small individual exhibition, each person in a specific selection of works, which will focus on a particular perspective, known or less known in a stage in which it still functions, in his time and also in our recollections, in the course of its personal development also as an associate of the typical process of his time and generation. All as one are interpreted today as those who moved in a range between “pure” conceptual thought and the expression of a position on questions of personal identity and social and even political (in its first signs) consciousness – this with the use of the new iconography in the local arts scene. The exhibition is meant to present, among other things, its motives, components, and affinities with this iconography.
The exhibit will be based on loans from galleries and private collections. The scheme for showing the exhibit is based on whole works of some of the key artists of the 1970s on long term loan from the Gordon Gallery in Tel Aviv.
In parallel with this exhibit the museum will present two individual displays of young artists who in line with the concepts of days gone by could be classified as avant-garde artists in our time. For both, this will be a first individual museum exhibition.
Jonathan Vinitzky – The Cruel King
Collection: Yonah Fisher
Jonathan Vinitzky is an Israeli artist (born 1980) who studied and now works in London.
In “The Cruel King” exhibit he presents a collection of works in various media domains that were all made, in parallel, for the exhibition. Behind the finished appearance of the works that were all made in mediums that identify with the arts tradition and modern art (such as drawing, painting, sculpture and engraving) lies a hidden, tangled and complex multi-layered process which creates subterranean connections between the works that in some way bring them all together. Each work is a sort of transformation or conversion of any source. In each work correspondingly there is an extant constancy that seeks to ensure faithfulness to this source, whether by creating a copy of any cultural product – such as the creation of art, a caricature, a newspaper article, an insignificant scrap of paper or a child’s drawing found in the street; whether by going along with the technique, colorfulness, method of hanging or structure of such an object; or whether it is by reconstruction of another artist’s work techniques, Vinitzky adapts all these, without hierarchy, to his work components: he appropriates, modifies and reinforces, lowers and elevates.
Vinitzky points out the visibility of the objects and sustains a fascinating reflection on source and representation, on copying and replication, on deceit and cliché, on wonder, on intention and choice, on the status of the creation, on the task of the artist, on the artistic establishment – on all the art components.
Laurent Mareschal – Impossible Renderings
Collection: Yonah Fisher
Laurent Mareschal (born 1975) is a French artist who presents a group of art installations surrounding the cultural and political perspectives characteristic of Israel in 2011, or presents from the outside a personal perspective, profound or smiling, on its people, customs and culture. All were created especially for the exhibition.
A starting point for thought on the exhibition was the sense that any rendering is by nature imperfect, and that all renderings are in fact transitions from one form to another. Mareschal presents a group of art installations as in each one of them he deals with various types of transitions: from medium to medium, from language to language, from text to note and even from sense of sight to sense of smell. In fact, the idea of the rendering and transition serves him as a metaphor for discussion on the frail and complex connections that demand dialog between people, between married couples and between various cultures and languages. The exhibition is organized under the sponsorship of the French Institute, the French Embassy in Israel.
Ashdod Art Museum, Monart Center
8 Derech Eretz Road, Ashdod, 08-8545180
www.ashdodartmuseum.org.il
Opening Hours: Mon, Wed, Thurs: 10:00 – 16:00; Tues 10:00 – 20:00; Fri, Sat: 10:30 – 13:30
