Weekly Highlights in Jerusalem’s Contemporary Art Scene

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Gallery Talk: Curatorial Visit with Chen Tamir

Chen Tamir will present her curatorial work over the past decade, unfolding a trajectory that spans various experimental projects and commissions. She’ll unpack some of the more notable projects she’s initiated, including a focus on ones that test ethical boundaries as well as socially based endeavors. She’ll survey her work starting at Flux Factory in New York in 2008 through her tenure at the Center for Contemporary Art Tel Aviv.​ Chen Tamir is Curator at the Center for Contemporary Art in Tel-Aviv, she also serves as Curatorial Associate at Artis, where she spearheads programming, including the large video survey “Staring Back at the Sun,” which premiered at the New Museum in New York in 2015 and has been traveling internationally since.

Gallery Talk Thursday February 20, 18:00 at Art Cube Artists Studios, HaUman St. 26. For more info, click here. 

Exhibition Opening: Strangeness 

The Israel Museum debut of actress and artist Raida Adon (born 1972), displaying her new video work Strangeness – an epic and poetic work addressing identity, refugees, and the yearning for a home. This narrative is comprised of powerful and dream-like images and is set in a location that is at once surreal and yet rooted in the local landscape. Strangeness evokes conflicting emotions of fragility and stability, wandering and permanence, as Adon shifts between her personal and collective identities, both Palestinian and Israeli. This work makes an important statement with a powerful urgency, transcending the local and the political and striving for the universal and human. Also on display are preparatory sketches and sculptural objects incorporated into the work.

 Exhibition Opening  Friday February 21, 10:00 at The Israel Museum, Ruppin Blvd. 11. For more info, click here.

Exhibition Opening: Bodyscapes

Bodyscapes studies the concept of embodiment and the corpus as an organizing structure. Examining the relationship between nature and culture through the prism of the body, this exhibition brings together historical sources and artworks ranging from prehistory to contemporary art in a variety of media: works on paper, photographs, sculpture, paintings, video works, and installations. Artists including Tracy Emin, Jenny Saville, Micha Ullman, Maya Zack, Karam Natour, Sigalit Landau, and Ori Reisman explore questions of proportion, the relationship between human beings and nature, and corporeal and mental boundaries in order to make personal, social, and political statements.

Exhibition Opening Friday February 21, 10:00 at The Israel Museum, Rupin Blvd. 11. For more info, click here.

Exhibition Opening: Between Heaven And Earth

Barbur Gallery is proud to present ‘Between Heaven and Earth,’ a solo exhibition by Rachel Rotenberg. The show will feature a large-scale sculpture, several smaller ones, as well as drawings on paper created by the artist, for whom wood is a primary medium. Rotenberg’s work focuses primarily on the construction of large, complex sculptures that contain intricate interior spaces and contain a sense of movement that is atypical of woodwork. The wood is painted and stained in a way that gives it a painterly quality while retaining its materiality. The creation of Rotenberg’s meticulously handcrafted sculptures involves a large measure of planning, that includes preparation drawings and support structures. Her process retains a free intuitive action, which changes the sculpture’s shape into new, unknown forms.

Exhibition Opening  Friday February 21, 12:00 at Barbur Gallery, Shirizli St. 6. For more info, click here.

Exhibition Opening: Best Interest  

The works in the exhibition Best Interest refer to usability and purposeful appearance as a starting point for the artistic work —  some of the works originate from everyday, useful objects that have undergone transformation or transcription until they are no longer usable. Others disguise themselves as useful objects; emulating empty ritual rituals of meaning that have no “practical” purpose, or are based on literary or visual texts related to art and usefulness.

Exhibition Opening Saturday February 22, 20:00 at Koresh 14 Gallery, Koresh St. 14. For more info, click here.

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