Land - A duo exhibition by Yael Lev and Rafi Münz
'LAND'
Painting – Installation – Video
Yael Lev - Rafi Münz
15.12.18 – 1.2.19
- Special Event: On Saturday, 12.1.19 at 11:00 - 'Glocal' - Land and Land - A gallery talk event featuring excerpts from the dance performance 'LAND' by Gil Kerer, staged by Alon Karniel, performed by the 'Nua' Dance Troupe - senior ensemble of the Menashe Dance Studio.
'LAND', the duo exhibition by artists Rafi Münz and Yael Lev, is a love letter and an expression of concern for our country. Through a collection of sounds and melodies that seek to be heard together, accompanied by a spirit of nonsense and humor, it offers a means to perhaps sense the blend of feelings each of us holds regarding the land where we were born or where we live. These mixed emotions of love-hate, distance-closeness, resistance-acceptance, friendship, and concern are directed toward a view of our country—one that possesses the capacity to express, awaken, and act; a stance that holds protest but is never helpless, and is entirely devoid of victimhood.
This exhibition was forged from the outside world and intentionally brought to life within the space of the Peace Gallery as planned.
"We logged a serious mileage by land, sea, and air while capturing 'situational snapshots' at different times of the day, in diverse sites, and on varying subjects," (Rafi). This is an external and internal journey taken by Rafi and Yael throughout 2018, a year that marks the conclusion of Israel’s 70th anniversary. Speaking in two distinct personal voices that dance together, they raise a profound question about this land: We all live here; what was it? What happened to it? What is it today? And how does all of this live within us.
The journey also speaks to the voices of entire demographic groups within it: young people, some of whom are leaving for Europe (both Jews and Arabs alike); veteran citizens who often voice their concerns because they no longer recognize their country; farmers and members of the agricultural settlements—from both societies—who were once the creators of the land and the tillers of its soil, and today feel the opportunity to continue cultivating their land is being almost completely slipped away from them; ecological groups that are steadily expanding out of the understanding that ecology today is not a luxury but an absolute necessity; groups that believe in coexistence in this land and still remember the cooperation and mutual existence that once thrived here in the distant past; and finally, a secular or pluralistic public that struggles to find the narrative of the country it once knew here today, as well as its place in the face of accelerating processes of religious coercion and radicalization.
The components of the exhibition operate on a wide sensory scale, expanding the possibilities for shared visual-experiential intersections: simple yet complex painting, realistic and expressive, graphic and sculptural, abstract and narrative, text-painting, relief, and installation (Rafi); moving images of concrete motifs or a reality abstracted by camera/driving movement, voices, sound, and music with improvisational characteristics projected from two projectors (Yael).
"The collection of feelings that passes through me today when the word LAND is spoken emphasizes simultaneously both the resistance and the impossible, unbreakable bond between me and my country," (Yael). Yael weaves and moves freely from artistic conventions along the spectrum between the documentary and the artistic. She avoids labels such as "video art" and treats imagery, sound, duration, as well as the concrete and the abstract, with nearly equal value. She operates through the trembling and personal just as she does through the thorough and investigative.
Rafi, a veteran conceptual artist, creates a large-scale painterly-graphic dialogue in both external and internal spaces using the language of graffiti art. He specializes in combining precise techniques with careless ones, and "correct" techniques with those that are not bound by the "proper rules of painting."
Rafi challenges the external space—which is accessible and open to everyone (walls of buildings, fences, barriers, wooden planks, parts of roads, and more serve as his canvases)—with subversive content in the manner of a "court jester," thereby rendering it, perhaps, something digestible.
Does humorous art and a spirit of nonsense hold a place of honor in the art world today? Just as the brush and paints are Rafi Münz's working tools, so too are the spirit of nonsense and humor. These allow for multiple layers of meaning and a cathartic release; sometimes, these are exactly what is required today to be able to live with and engage in the conflictual content of our land.
Rafi speaks. Yael operates through subterranean, wordless feelings. This is a deeply respectful completion of an artistic friendship, manifested in shared actions over many years.
In Arabic, Eretz (Land) was translated into Biladi (My Country, a multi-layered expression). Rafi and Yael cannot bring a personal, first-person perspective of the Arabs living here, who certainly would not call their land Eretz Yisrael (a pair of words that for some equates to the term Greater Israel). They can, however, see and revitalize this land as a country of shared perception, shaping the space of this exhibition to express this, and choosing to title the exhibition in Arabic Biladi, and not just Bilad.
'LAND' is the childhood landscape of us all, the land we love so deeply and refuse to leave, yet living in it, its processes of growth and transformation, create within us sensations that move back and forth between those tender memories and emotions and the feelings that accompany our daily lives—feelings that ultimately must live together inside us.
Arise and Walk the Land / Yuval Danieli - Hadaf Hayarok Newspaper
"LAND" - an integrated art exhibition (painting, video, music) at the Peace Gallery in the Art Center at Givat Haviva.
Rafi Münz – Painting. Yael Lev – Video. Ilya Magnes – Music.
Curator: Anat Lidror. Exhibition ends: 1.2.2019
Sometimes a person is truly the mold of their native land and not just a line from a poem. Sometimes the person standing behind their creations is no less fascinating and interesting than the artworks themselves. In other words: when a high-quality individual meets a fine creation of their own, the condition for a highly recommended exhibition is met. Rafi Münz is an untiring artist who always surprises me anew. Even at his advanced age (born 1938), he carries himself like a youth in a youth movement. His face bears a mischievous and welcoming spirit; he is someone who loves to hike the length and breadth of the land, taking in its beauty, its charms, and its pains.
Rafi Münz, though born a Sabra (native) in Mandatory Palestine, carries with him the remnants of his parents' birthplace (Germany). Until the age of six, he spoke German with his parents at his home in Haifa, and fluent Arabic with the neighborhood children in Wadi Nisnas, where his home was located. At the age of six, he began learning and speaking Hebrew upon entering first grade. Rafi looks at Israeli reality at eye level, with both criticism and compassion. Out of an endless love for this tormented land, he does not hide either its wonders or its wrinkles. "LAND" is what Rafi called his exhibition, which was joined by two others: Yael Lev, a video artist who documented in a complementary, sensitive, identifying, and collaborative manner Rafi Münz's creative journey through the land of his creation. They were joined by the musician of the team—Ilya Magnes, whose music integrated into Yael Lev's video alongside Rafi's artworks does wonders for the exhibition. His nostalgic interpretation of Land of Israel songs (Hatikvah, Shibolet Basadeh, Beharim Kvar Hashemesh Melahetet, etc.) is performed by him on a variety of ethnic instruments that anchor the time and place even further.
Intentionally, I am not yet diving into specific examples from the exhibition. I am still carrying with me the impression of the first encounter with the exhibition and the climate it projects onto me. An impression of a journey, nostalgic, in the fields of yesteryear, joined by a sharp, implied cultural-political critique, such that I could easily have joined Rafi's hike with a backpack and a walking stick... The entirety brings about a deep sense of identification with what the creators of the exhibition sought, to my understanding, to convey to the viewers. Walking through the exhibition, the melody of Yair Klinger to Yoram Taharlev's words "Arise and Walk the Land" plays in my head. Instead of the stick, Rafi holds the brush, wandering and painting, writing and immortalizing his insights. Into his backpack, he gathers the roadside litter thrown from a passing car window, which he integrates into his artworks.
At the entrance to the Art Center Gallery at Givat Haviva, we are greeted by the graphic, minimalist figure of the Land of Israel in purple and burgundy tones and in three languages, looking like a well-sculpted girl. On the map of the country, as an inseparable part of the work, a video film is projected, serving as an opening to the journey we are destined to experience later on... A film moving between abstract shapes and flashes of light and color, and tangible touches of the field. What connects them is the unceasing movement of that very journey, by car, train, donkey, or airplane. Unfortunately, when I entered the gallery, drills were piercing electrical holes in the wall, preventing me from hearing the accompanying sound of the artwork at the entrance. Later, I entered the main hall of the gallery, and there I sat down to see and hear the musical tones without the jarring background noise. Indeed, the central artwork spanning the entire wall is masterfully constructed from three equal units: in the center of the wall is a video screen operating on a continuous loop, projecting Rafi's journey and his creative process. To the right is a landscape painting in color, in a minimalist style—fields in the valley, or in his interpretation, "Secrets in the Valley." And then the imagination is triggered: what hidden secrets does the valley hoard in its memories? Believe Rafi, he knows... On the left is a second landscape painting of his beloved land, a landscape with cypresses and a horse galloping in the open spaces, and inscribed on the artwork is: "I will set in the desert the cypress, the plane and the pine together" (Isaiah Chapter 41). A horse galloping along the cypresses. What an ultimate combination of the country's symbols! I know a bronze horse upon which Alexander Zaid sits, looking over the "Secrets in the Valley." In Rafi's case, the horse escaped from the watchman... I sat on a white bench in front of the artwork throughout the 20 minutes of the video, my head moving between the static and the dynamic, between the simple, symbolic-minimalist representing an old and good myth, and the movement and occurrence on the screen, which is always more complex. Sometimes the brushstrokes on the canvases connect graphically to the events on the video screen. The conceptual connection turns into a physical one. The video documents Rafi's journey across the country. Rafi paints on houses under construction, on a house abandoned over the years on a small hill. On walls and fences, at crossroads—anything is good to paint the signposts of his journeys upon. His documented work is a type of graffiti, in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. Rafi loves the Arabic script, fascinated by the calligraphy of the writing. He commands the nuances of the script and language; for him, this knowledge is essential to his creation. The photographer Yael Lev chose to shoot Rafi painting always from his back. For those who do not know him, his identity remains anonymous. Wearing a white hat on his head in a French Impressionist style ala Renoir. Ochre-yellow clothes on his body—the kind that remind us of our soil, which is sometimes brown and sometimes, during the hot summer days, yellow. Rafi is an artist of words. Words with double meanings, carrying a fine humor alongside foundational assets from biblical and Zionist texts. The integration of sentences carrying meaning within his artworks, thereby becoming an inseparable part of them, is not new to artistic discourse. They are not a decoration for its own sake; they are part of the message. In this respect, despite all the difference in their style of painting, I found a common thread with the works of Garbuz as they were presented at the "Zu-Zu" gallery in Emek Hefer, where Garbuz frequently integrated quotes and texts that also carried double meanings. In terms of the handling of color, minimalism, and climate, there is an echo of the approach to color that reminded me of Ori Reisman (Cabri). Nevertheless, Rafi Münz's artwork, the collaboration with Yael Lev and the musician Ilya Magnes, is fascinating and unique to his creation.
Rafi's work is "anti-monumental" in its essence, despite the breadth of his canvases. It is built from "poor materials"—simple, recycled: cardboard, plywood, wooden boards, tires, an old shutter window, trash collected from the roadsides. He maintains a dialogue with waste, a mockery of ecology. His paintings are sort of "childish," as if saying to us: "anyone can do it." Their strength is in their simplicity. One thing cannot be said about them, however: they are not naive. There is an inherent, intelligent, calculated sophistication in every placement of line and color.
"Rafi is a veteran conceptual artist, creating a large-scale painterly-graphic dialogue in external and internal areas using the language of graffiti art..." (from the words of the curator: Anat Lidror). The curator beautifully defined the outlook on the exhibition: "as one that holds protest but is never helpless, and is entirely devoid of victimhood."
I chose to conclude this review with a description of one artwork out of many that demonstrates Rafi Münz's way of thinking, humor, and critical insights:
A closed, elongated, and well-used wooden window shutter. Peeling, the kind collected from the street after use. Behind it, on khaki-colored cardboard, peeks a drawing in black ink of an Ultra-Orthodox rabbi's hat. Below, at the edge of the cardboard, is written in black: "The Hidden Rabbi" (where the hidden far exceeds the revealed). Anyone can complete the sentence... The idea lends itself to several interpretations: what hides behind the closed shutter, what deals, what offenses in the name of religion, what wisdom is uttered behind the shutter, why is the hidden greater than the revealed. The question mark does not need to be written. It exists conceptually, and in a big way.
In conclusion: This is an optimistic exhibition, primarily in its message; one can travel the land, love it, and change it, because "we have no other country."
A Glimpse into the Exhibition
עדיין אין תגובות לדף זה.
מוזמנים להגיב!