Material Imagination: Inflamed Nerve / Israeli Art from the Museum’s Collection
Inflamed Nerve, the third chapter of the Museum's Israeli art collection exhibition Material Imagination, is launched in the midst of the deepest rift that Israeli society has ever seen. The social, ideological, and religious polarization pounds in the exhibition like the throbbing pulse of the artworks and their evolving interrelations. After three years of display, the exhibition, which features works created here over more than a century, has been supplemented by some 70 new works by leading artists, some well-known, others making their debut.
The space dedicated to the poetics of fire, Blazing Movement, is charged—as before, and to an even greater extent—with a call for action, cementing our place in the East; floating in the Airship space are various manifestations of the disintegration of the private and public body; while the space of Promised Land seethes with a sense of detachment, exile, and nomadism.
David Adika, The Black Panthers, 40 Years later: Avraham Bardugo, born 1944, Haifa, Israel, (Klil, 2011) // Charlie Biton, born 1944, Casablanca, Morocco, (Jerusalem, 2011) // Kochavi Shemesh, born 1944, Baghdad, Iraq, (Jerusalem, 2011) // Reuven (Robert) Abergel, born 1943, Rabat, Morocco, (Ashdod 2011)
Black-and-White photograph, Inkjet print, 120×90 cm each
Purchased through the Yona Ettinger–Howard Gillman Fund for the Acquisition of Israeli Art, 2023
Courtesy of the artist and Braverman Gallery, Tel Aviv
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The exhibition Material Imagination departs from the story of Israeli art as a chronological narrative running parallel to the national story. Material Imagination is a model of thinking conceived by philosopher Gaston Bachelard during years of delving into the four elements—earth, air, water, and fire—and their incarnations in the imagination and in art. The material imagination thrives in the dialogue between the materials of the world and archaic images—archetypes accumulated and etched in human consciousness.
The model formulated by Bachelard is the organizing principle underpinning the current collection exhibition. The three galleries of Israeli art unfold three chapters: Promised Land, Airship, and Blazing Movement. Each chapter examines the works through a host of associations arising from the artworks' materials or elemental images. This distinction returns the gaze to the materiality of the artwork as an act and an object, requiring an attentive gaze, free of preconceptions regarding the art created here from the beginning of the previous century to the present day.
David Ginton, The Concubine on the Hill I (after Jasper Johns), 1995
Encaustic on canvas and a bullet casing filled with cast tin, 195×120 cm
Gift of the artist on the occasion of winning the Rappaport Prize for an Established Israeli Artist, 2019
Courtesy of the artist and Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv-Jerusalem-New York
The exhibition is generously supported by Zila and Giora Yaron; Hava and Alfred Akirov; Tova and Sami Sagol; Anonymous Donation