Temporary Exhibitions

PERFORMALISM: FORM AND PERFORMANCE IN DIGITAL ARCHITECTURE
Performalism: Form and Performance in Digital Architecture Guest Curators Arch. Yasha Grobman, Arch. Dr. Eran Neuman Catalogue Architects of the early twentieth century determined the architectural form as a derivation of the function it had to fulfill. In the wake of the digital revolution, the relation between form and function has been extended and defined as the outcome of performance. The concept performance generally defines the manner in which we use architectural form not only in relation to physical factors such as climate and construction, but also in relation to the perceptual and cognitive dimensions expressed, among other things, in understanding the sensations that a certain space can arouse. The current exhibition critically examines the meaning, implications, and influences of this architectural phenomenon. The main argument of the exhibition is that digital architecture’s formalism, realized through a multidimensional use of performance, offers a field of action by far wider than mere formalism, actually defining new needs and a new inessential concept of subjectivity. Shown in the exhibition will be built, virtual and conceptual architectural projects concerned with computer based architecture and which apply intricate forms that raise questions regarding the use of the new technology. The participants include Archi-Tectonics, USA and Netherland; Karl Chu, USA; Preston Scott Cohen, USA; Contemporary Architecture Practice, USA; Eisenman Architects, USA; Foster+Partners, UK; Franken Architekten, Germany; Gehry Partners, LLP / Gehry Technologies, USA; GLForm, USA; Kol/Mac LLC, USA; OCEAN, Europe, Australia and Israel; Open Source, USA, Europe and Israel; R&Sie (n), France; RUR, USA. Exhibition courtesy AZRIELI GROUP and with the assistante of an anonymous donation ENCOUNTER WITH THE EXHIBITION CURATORS 17.7 20.00; 26.7 11.00; 12.8 20.00; 23.8 11.00
The 1970s in Israeli Art: My Own Body
The 1970s in Israeli Art: My Own Body Opening Thursday, 31 July 2008, for Museum Members and Patrons Open to the general public from 1 August Location Sam and Ayala Zacks Pavilion; Markus B. Mizne Gallery, Gabrielle Rich Wing; Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Sculpture Gallery Curator Prof. Mordechai Omer Catalogue Within the framework of the six national exhibitions shown in honor of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art has chosen to present the 1970s: 1968 – 1978. The exhibition focuses on works of art in which the body of the artist himself served as material for the work. The exhibition consists of two main parts: one concentrates on self-portraits in which artists related primarily to the face as a means for transmitting a message. About thirty artists represent this trend in the show, from artists who were then starting their careers (such as Ra’anan Levy and Asad Azi) through such established artists as Avigdor Arikha and Igael Tumarkin – each in his own way and style. The second, more extensive, part of the show focuses on the artist’s body, and is anchored, among others, in post-conceptual trends and body art, as well as in various mediums – performance, installation, and video, television and cinematic photography. In these works the artist takes upon himself several new roles: examining criteria in relationship to space (for example, Micha Ullman, Joshua Neustein, Michael Druks, Moshe Ninio); a driving force for action in landscape (like Itzhak Danziger, Avital Geva, Pinchas Cohen Gan, Benni Efrat); presence of a shaman and mender of the world (like Motti Mizrahi, Avraham Ofek, Michael Grobman, Haim Maor); victim’s sensitivities and self-exposure to experiences (for example, Yocheved Weinfeld, Yudith Levin, Gideon Gechtman, David Ginton). The catalogue contains essays by the Museum curators and an essay by Prof. Tamar Herman on Israeli society of the 1970s. GALLERY TALKS (HEBREW) 5.8 20.00 21.8 20.00
The Andrea M. Bronfman Prize for Contemporary Crafts: Esther Knobel
The Andrea M. Bronfman Prize for Contemporary Crafts Esther Knobel: Long distance Runner Location Jeanette Assia Gallery Curator Meira Yagid-Haimovich Catalogue Ever since the late 1970s, having completed her studies in the jewelry department of Bezalel and the Royal College of Art, London, Esther Knobel (b. 1949, Poland) has been meandering as a sensor between the international avant-garde jewelry scene and what occurs in the immigrant society of Israel. The local genealogy of jewelry has traversed a long way from the early days of Bezalel’s department of filigree (an ancient ornamental technique in gold and silver) through the “Zionist” aesthetics of the 1950s and ‘60s, and the conceptual preoccupation of jewelry as a critical field of action, to the position of jewelry on the seam line between craft and art. Knobel’s body of work consists of reflective jewelry/objects charged with autobiographical and cultural-Israeli contents, with stereotypical images, with archetypes. Her works embody a critical dimension alongside “confrontations” with jewelry practices salvaged by her from traditional connotation. The exhibition is a kind of open private encyclopedia spanning three decades. In a process of grouping, assembling and filing there unfolds before the viewer a visual field of works both refined and coarse, reworked readymades, various collections, and sketches in raw material, vestiges, scribbles, cunning work – materials and contents moving in variations flowing back and forth in a spiral motion.
Yitzhak Livneh: Astonishment Paintings 1985 - 2008
Yitzhak Livneh: Astonishment Paintings 1985 - 2008 Opening Thursday, 24 July 2008, for Museum Members and Patrons Open to the general public from 25 July Location Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Pavilion Curator Ellen Ginton Catalogue A first one-man show given to painter Yitzhak Livneh (b. 1952). Since the mid-1980s Livneh has been exhibiting series of themes which change from one exhibition to the next: car lights in a nocturnal landscape, still lifes with fabrics, scenes of voidness, Veronicas, the motif of painting’s invention; the motif of astonishment recurs in different versions in his work of recent years. These images are generally based on materials taken from magazines, manuals, catalogues of public auctions and the like – old and “low” material that lends the paintings the quality of postmemories. The name of the show, “Astonishment,” is taken from the title of an illustration in a manual for painting various physiognomies by the 17th-century French painter, Charles Le Brun. Livneh displaced the man’s gaping mouth in Le Brun’s illustration onto a woman’s face appearing in an illustration taken from an American book, a kind of encyclopedia for youth. The woman in the image is seated in her home – composedly just until a moment before, as a ball is flung from outside shattering the window pane, turning over a vase and the book in her hands. The woman’s prosaic astonishment becomes a metaphor for the ultimate astonishment, that of the tidings of death – another motif in a large group of death metaphors in Livneh’s work. GALLERY TALKS (HEBREW) 14.8 20.00 19.8 20.00
Stematsky’s “Open Works”
Stematsky’s “Open Works” Opening Thursday, 31 July 2008, for Museum Members and Patrons Open to the general public from 1 August Location Simon and Marie Jaglom Pavilion Guest Curator Romy Golan Catalogue In the 1980s, during the last ten years of his life, Avigdor Stematsky embarked on a remarkable series of more than seventy-five works on paper, circa twenty of which form the subject of this exhibition. Looking for a working method that would enable him to work with greater ease, he moved away from the two mediums that he had used until then, namely, watercolor and oil, in favor of a new medium, tempera, and a new support, newsprint. These temperas were all made in his Tel Aviv studio on Mane Street, executed either on a table or on the floor. The sheets of paper - all 140x100 cm - were the largest he had ever worked on. Both the medium and the support allowed him to recharge a terrain he knew well - that of painterly abstraction - with a new sense of unpredictability. Indeed, this series may be best characterized, following the semiologist Umberto Eco, as “open works”: open in the sense that they allow for indeterminacy, complexity, and entropy both at the time of their making and that of their viewing. The exhibition is sponsored by the Nata Dushnitsky-Kaplan Prize
Tuvia Beeri: Unity in Multiplicity
Tuvia Beeri: Unity in Multiplicity Location Charles and Evelyn Kramer Galleries Curator Prof. Avraham Ronen Book Through 30 August Presented for the first time is a broad retrospective panorama spanning forty-five years of the artistic activity of Tuvia Beeri – painter, sculptor, one of Israel’s major printmakers, a pioneer of color aquatint and one of its leading artists. The exhibition and the accompanying book trace Beeri’s artistic development, starting with the abstract oils and watercolors of his early period and culminating in a new selection from the rich corpus of his color aquatints – the better known among his works – and from his later acrylics. An avowed modernist, Beeri’s work is intensely concerned with the development of formal and structural values and their planned composition. His mature works incorporate in a unique and sophisticated manner abstract geometric motifs with details taken from reality and images inspired by stories of the Creation, mythology and more, on all of which Beeri imposes order and harmonious unity. ENCOUNTER WITH THE ARTIST 8.7 20.00
David Salle: The Raffael
David Salle: The Raffael Location Foyer near Graphics Study Room, Garden level Curator Irith Hadar Through August 30 An Album of seven etchings, printed by Aldo Crommelynck, Paris, 1985-1986. Publisher: Maximilian Verlag Sabine Knust, Munich. Acquired through a contribution from Edward and Marion Richmond and family, Canada. The series of prints bears the name of a Paris hotel in which David Salle resided at the time he was working on them. The room is the scene of the occurrences depicted on the sheets, on which a multilayered, interlaced presence of female figures, furniture and accessories is created.
TEN FINGERS PAINTING PICASSO… AN ARTIST ALSO FOR THE YOUNG
TEN FINGERS PAINTING PICASSO… AN ARTIST ALSO FOR THE YOUNG From 15.7 A workshop for 3-6 year-olds and parents. Picasso – an artist that loved to draw, paint, sculpt and invent. The workshop is open during museum hours.
MEISSEN PORCELAIN
HELENA RUBINSTEIN PAVILION FOR CONTEMPORARY ART NEW EXHIBITIONS MEISSEN PORCELAIN Location The Danek and Jadzia Gertner Galleries CuratorDr. Doron J. Lurie Catalogue picture:Rape of Europe, ca. 1800, Meissen One of the synonyms for porcelain is the word china (from China, the country), which denotes the material’s historical origin. Meissen porcelain is considered one of the high-quality porcelains in the European porcelain industry (other porcelain factories are Rosenthal of Austria, Vienna Porcelain, Delft porcelain in the Netherlands, Sèvres in France, Capodimonte in Naples, and more). Following continuous attempts, chemists who worked at the service of Emperor Augustus II of Saxony succeeded in producing porcelain that was similar to the renowned Chinese porcelain. A factory was founded in Meissen, near Dresden, which employed potters, goldsmiths, painters, designers, enamel and glass artists; it flourished throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries. Meissen factories produced various figures (in the semblance of members of the nobility, peasants, animals, and so forth) in various scenes taken from everyday life, from Greek mythology, allegories, as well as functional decorative items (candelabras, tableware, clocks, etc.). Some of these were white, while others were painted in splendid colors. The exhibition features about forty items, most of them Meissen products, on loan from Danek and Jadzia Gertner, Vienna.