A new art gallery opened in Tel Aviv in December, and news about the new exhibition ‘Glass – Trends in Contemporary Glass Sculpture’ started to make their way to the media. I visited yesterday the gallery and exhibition and it was a quite pleasant surprise and experience.
the Litvak Gallery
The gallery is located at the first floor of the tower building behind the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. From the museum plaza cross the street on the pedestrian bridge and you get just to that level. (At the ground floor you can find the Toto restaurant – one of the best in Tel Aviv).
(video source LitvakGallery)
I was not very enthusiastic about the exhibition space. It is limited, it lacks natural light, and the internal organization of the exhibition was not too balanced, with one larger room and two smaller ones interconnected by corridors that succeeded to be crowded despite the gating function that selling tickets for every half hour is performing. I can predict that for the last month of the current exhibition, as word spreads about the quality of the art that is exposed the situation will get worse.
(video source LitvakGallery)
Yet – the art is wonderful. It is a show not to be missed by art lovers who happen to be close to the artistic and cultural hub of Israel. The gallery gathered works of 23 of the best living artists who chose glass as their principal medium of expression. Selected works of the best artists in the branch were brought to the exhibition, and some were created especially for this event. The principal trends in the field are represented, and so are many of the principal centers of glass art who operate world-wide including Murano, Bohemia, and Providence, Rhode Island. All the show is worth being looked at attentively, visited and revisited, but I especially loved the cosmic vegetation forms created by Dale Chihuly (well known to the Israeli public from his 2000 exhibition at the Tower of David in Jerusalem), the elegant shapes of Davide Salvadore and Lino Tagliepietra that succeed to create aesthetic amazement but also anxiety at the same time, the human figures imprisoned in glass by Ann Wolf and the sophisticated forms and effects Julius Weiland and Jirina Zertova.
(video source LitvakGallery)
A special space was created for Lucio Bubacco‘s work ‘Eternal Temptation’ – a meditation in glass with Biblical ambitions, with in a style that combines baroque with modern kitch. The documentary clip above of one of the several accessible to the viewers of the exhibition in the last hall, sharing some of the production secrets of part of the artists in the exhibition. The audio-guide is also excellent, each artist is presented with essential details and information about his background, activities, and exposed works and I recommend not to be missed. The exhibition is open until May 15, and the Web site http://www.litvakgallery.co.il/ also includes useful information (but only in Hebrew for the time being).