PLAIN ABSTRACT
India International Centre
Embassy of Israel in India
Givat Haviva, Israel and The GH Art Center, Israel
presents
An online exhibition by Dani Karavan and Atar Geva from Israel
Curators: Anat Lidror and Noa Karavan
The online exhibition is on view from 13th to 26th July 2020
The online exhibition brings together the work of two leading
contemporary artists from Israel, Dani Karavan and Atar Geva who meet at Givat
Haviva, in its home for art, the GH Art Gallery. Growing into and out of the
place, they engage with the space, with each other, and negotiate the idea of
simplicity, the abstract, real, alive and mundane. Creative materials such as
sand, the olive tree and citrus trees are Karavan’s art materials, a continuous
and endless work of art. Geva’s spilled paint, spreading at will and becoming
liquid or solidifying, and the sculptural combustion process, with their
distinctive aroma, is both part of the processes as well as a co-creators of
the works. The exhibition also questions the idea of the kibbutz, to which
Karavan was a member and Geva was born into.
About the artists
Dani Karavan, 89, international sculptor, creator and artist, has to date
created over 70 projects in Israel and around the world. All of them have been
site specific masterpieces such as the Negev Monument, Kikar Levana (White
Square) and Square of Culture (Habima Square). At a comprehensive seminar
centred on his work, one of the speakers, Michal Rovner (artist),
said: "When I asked Dani how he defined himself, he replied: I
once called myself a painter, then a sculptor; I was called a decorator, then I
was called a set designer. Today I call myself a sculptor, a creator. I open
new windows, start from nothing, start from scratch. "
Atar Geva, 45, still has a long road ahead, but if one looks for a definition
for what he does, one realizes that these words are not too big for him. He
creates (sometimes with partners) art in the sphere between painting and
sculpture; orchestrates live events which are large, breathing art works that
combine many artists and their work and the public that participates and shares
the experience. Such as Under the Streetlamp (a two-night arts
festival in Givat Haviva); and Artaftefet (a happening
combining art, science and education). In all those spheres, Geva is clearly
thrilled with the uncontrollable space, the composition created by the material
– which can be industrial paint, a burning process that sculpts newspapers, or
artists and art, community and experience, all in one space.
Geva grew up (in Kibbutz Ein Shemer; his father Avital Geva is a
conceptual artist working on the line between art, agriculture and education)
in the lap of art, of conceptual thought, of agriculture, kibbutz and Hashomer
Hatzair movement (the initial Zionist youth movement, founded in Eastern
Europe on the eve of the First World War), as well as in the experience of
exploration and experimentation. He developed them into research on the
essence of matter in its broader sense, on the connection between disciplines,
art and people.
Dani Karavan also grew up (in Tel Aviv of yesteryear) in a very
similar environment. His parents, members of Hashomer
Hatzair, made aliyah ("making aliyah" by moving to
the Land of Israel is one of the most basic tenets of Zionism) as young people
to Bitaniya city. His father was the first landscape architect of Tel Aviv from
the 1940s through the 1960s. Karavan was a member of the movement in his youth.
He was one of the founders of Kibbutz Harel, which later broke up following an
ideological dispute. His first creations were illustrations for Hashomer
Hatzair publications and the children's weekly, Davar Liyeladim.
Karavan is therefore, fundamentally, a member of Hashomer Hatzair,
this is where he comes from and this is the source of his deep belief that art
should be the property of the general public rather than of select individuals.
In the 1950s, Karavan studied fresco technique at Florence where he was learnt
the importance of place, and of art being place-dependent. He has thus evolved
over the years to become a broad-minded artist who deals with the essence of a
place, the simplest way of saying that which sustains a living place, where
people are the ones who create it as such.
For both of them, the road may be long and unknown, but the work
of art, one way or the other, will eventually have to reach its true, simple
existence.
