KONTINUUM
Alfred Cooperative Institute for Art and Culture (Tel Aviv)
in collaboration with
BETONBOX art space (Düsseldorf, Germany)
20.07.2017 - 18.08.2017
On Thursday, July 7, 2017 Alfred Gallery will open a group exhibition titled Kontinuum. The exhibition will feature works of art in different mediums of Alfred Gallery's artists, and of the artists of BETONBOX Artspace, Düsseldorf, Germany.
Participating artists:
From the Alfred gallery members: Dafna Gazit / Dvir Cohen-kedar / Adi Levy/ Talya Raz / Rotem Ritov / Avner Levinson
The BETONBOX members: Bernhard Kucken / Florian Zeeh / Mavi Garcia / Susanne Hille/ Nathalie Bertrams / Mareike Piepel / Hyacinta Hovestadt, Ruth Mensah
Alfred Gallery is pleased to announce collaboration with the BETONBOX art space in Düsseldorf, Germany.
The beginning of the collaboration was launched in a group exhibition, titled 'Lichtung', exhibiting artists from both cooperatives, shown at BETONBOX, Düsseldorf in October 2015, and another group exhibition titled 'Clearing' at Alfred Gallery in January 2016.
In April 2017, seven Israeli artists were hosted in Düsseldorf to work on the third collaborative project titled KONTINUUM. Small groups of two or three artists were formed, each consisting of members of both artists' associations, and worked together on a shared project. The contributions to the exhibition were developed first via digital communication, skype calls and emails - mutual concepts were explored and discussed. Finally, the works were realized in the artists' home studios and in a joint preparatory period in Düsseldorf, resulting in a mutually curated exhibition in the BETONBOX gallery space.
On July 20, with the arrival of the German participants to Israel, the second part of the KONTINUUM project will manifest in Alfred Gallery.
About the collaborative projects:
Avner Levinson, Bernhard Kucken, and Dvir Cohen-Kedar chose to relate to the sculpture of Laocoön and His Sons as a common starting point. The sculpture depicts a mythical story about tragic heroism. Each of the artists gave an interpretation of the story in his medium of practice, whether it was sculpture, drawing, or painting.
Dafna Gazit and Nathalie Bertrams created a portrait series of African migrants that are held in detention centre Holot in Israel, shot with a large-format camera in an open air ‘studio’ in the Negev desert. The intention of the project is to humanize and individualize the refugees, which the Israeli government has labelled “infiltrators” and to shine a light on undemocratic and inhumane dealings with migrants that are also taking root as political practises in Europe.
Talya Raz, Mavi Garcia and Ruth Mensah will exhibit three videos documenting a performance that took place at the BETONBOX. In the performance, titled 'I Remember', each artist created a private space, a world hidden behind a black curtain. Inside their confined spaces, they carried out various actions, which were broadcasted to a television screen in real time. The work, which relates to issues of privacy and sharing in the online world, will be presented in the current exhibition on three separate screens, each of which will provide a glimpse into their inner world.
Yoav Admoni and Hyacinta Hovestadt will exhibit sculptural works that relate to representations of nature and landscape. Admoni refers to the Israeli nature and reduces it to a size of a capsule. Hovestadt will exhibit an abstraction of a landscape and examine how it falls apart and builds up by repetition.
Susanne Hille and Rotem Ritov each created figures of goddesses based on local mythological traditions (German and Mediterranean). The exhibition will feature a memorabilia stand for these two goddesses, containing various ritual objects, reminiscent of souvenir stands for tourists in religious places of worship.
Hille will display parasols / umbrellas made of postcards. Upon standing underneath an umbrella, one is protected against the evil forces of Carlista, and is protected from distractions, bad thoughts and intentions. Ritov will exhibit miniature sheikh tombs, icons of contemporary "saints" (figures of stone throwers), seeds of thistles, local gold stones and more. These give their owners protection against distortions of narratives, and enable the existence of parallel narratives without creating a conflict between them.
The cooperation between Adi Levy, Mareike Piepel and Florian Zeeh has been created around the mutual sharing of intimate experiences of the past year, related to the blossoming and withering of the lives of loved ones. Each of them expressed the ongoing inner process within a shared space.
The ongoing collaboration between the cooperatives allows individual artists to push through the boundaries of their country without being dependent on commercial factors, and we aim to expand this activity to other countries.
The project is enabled through the generous support of the Cultural Office of Dusseldorf.
The BETONBOX is art space since 2010 and has seven members. The gallery space is located in a bunker that was used during the Second World War. The building covers an area of 600 square meters, has a huge exhibition space, and private studios. The gallery collaborates with a dozen other artists and various art institutions in Germany and is supported by different German ministries.
BETONBOX members: Bernhard Kucken / Florian Zeeh / Mavi Garcia / Susanne Hille / Natalie Bertrams / Mareike Piepel / Hyacinta Hovestadt, Ruth Mensah
Images from KONTINUUM exhibition in Düsseldorf (April 2017)
