Material Imagination: Inflamed Nerve / Israeli Art from the Museum’s Collection

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.

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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.

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Participating artists:
Larry Abramson, Abed Abdi, Asim Abu Shakra, Carim Abu Shakra, David Adika, Dalia Amotz, Arie Aroch, Asad Azi, Samuel Bak, Micha Bar-Am, Ido Bar-El, Avner Ben-Gal, Adam Berg, Yosef Budko, Yael Burstein, Zoya Cherkassky, Chen Cohen, Pinchas Cohen Gan, Drora Dominey, Ya'acov Dorchin, Michael Druks, Benni Efrat, Smadar Eliasaf, Leon Engelsberg, Bracha L. Ettinger, Belu-Simion Fainaru, Gideon Gechtman, Moshe Gershuni, Tamar Geter, Tsibi Geva, David Ginton, Aharon Gluska, Yitzhak Golombek, Michael Gross, Dor Guez, Michael Halak, Omer Halperin, Gaston Zvi Ickowicz, Zohar Tal Inbar, Eti Jacobi Lelior, Uri Katzenstein, Micha Kirshner, R. B. Kitaj, Angela Klein, Jossef Krispel, Moshe Kupferman, Elad Larom, Raffi Lavie, Yehudit Levin, Pamela Levi, Ruth Light Braun, Uri Lifshitz, Maria Saleh Mahameed, Gil Marco Shani, Maryan, Moshe Matusowski, Abraham Melnikov, Uriel Miron, Motti Mizrachi, Moshe Mokady, Michal Na'aman, Joshua Neustein, Avraham Ofek, Avshalom Okashi, Chana Orloff, Nira Pereg, Eli Petel, Meir Pichhadze, Moshe Propes, David Reeb, Ori Reisman, Elham Rokni, Reuven Rubin, Yehudit Sasportas, Ruth Schloss, Netally Schlosser, Beno Schutz, Etty Schwartz, Ivan Schwebel, Michael Sgan Cohen, Gil Shahar, Henry Shelesnyak, Daniel Silver, Pesach Slabosky, Jakob Steinhardt, Moshe Sternschuss, Uri Stettner, Yehezkel Streichman, Sionah Tagger, Nhum Tevet, Igael Tumarkin, Micha Ullman, Aviva Uri, Yocheved Weinfeld, Shahar Yahalom, Yael Yudkovik.