A visit to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art allows nowadays to play not only a labyrinth orientation game around the building which will soon enjoy the opening of a new wing, but also visiting a few exhibitions that are interesting and at least will challenge the art lovers who will visit them in the coming weeks. A lot of information about the museum and its exhibitions can be read on the museum Web site at http://www.tamuseum.com/ which is also the source of the illustrations.
Gershuni - El Male Rahamim
The principal exhibition open in the museum right now is the retrospective of the works of Moshe Gershuni – now extended to stay open until after mid February. Gershuni is one of the most socially active, controversial and interesting artists who lives today in Israel, and the show covers works from his first paintings at the start of the 70s until very recent works. Some like the above question the relation between the artist (who had religious education during his childhood) and God.
Gershuni - Beautiful Soldier
The soldiers series in the 80s made Gershuni famous not only for his non-conventional painting technique but also for his left-wing and pacifist political standings, which are still a landmark for his works until today.
Gershuni - anti-icon
The ‘anti-icon’ series (unofficial name) use shoes boxes open in the shape of the cross which is an anti-symbol in the Jewish iconography. Asking questions on faith and its representation on this already unusual and almost provocative media is another challenge that the artist launches to the viewers.
Gershuni - Hi Cyclamen
The Gershuni exhibition must be seen, as such a gathering of the works of the artist will not be available again so soon if ever. There is much more to be seen lyke the cyclamen series, the Jerusalem inspired landscapes (if they can be called so), the “Jewish ceramics” or the sculptures which are if I am not mistaken shown for the first time to the public. Viewers may not like all or anything of what they will see in this exhibition, but they will not remain indifferent.
Rainer Fetting - Self-Portrait
Another exhibition worth being seen is based on a donation of New Yorkers Susan and Martin Sanders who gave to the museum a grouping of German art created in the 1970s and 1980s in the Neo-Expressionist style very typical to the German art of the period. The range of works deal with subjects that start from the aesthetic and personal themes of the Expressionism and go until the more engaged paintings inspired by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the reunification of Berlin and of Germany that followed. Rainer Fetting is one of the painters best represented in the exhibition, roughly half of the paintings belong to him and they are certainly worth being seen, as Fetting is one of the best known, mature and interesting German painters today.
Henry Moore - Model for Reclining Figure
Another collection exhibition groups the sculptures donated 15 years ago to the museum by Helene and Zygfryd Wolloch, a couple from Scarsdale, New York. The show starts with a piece by Rodin and extends until sculpture of the last decades of the 20th century. No masterpieces in this exhibition but a few fine pieces like the Henry Moore above, a sophisticated game interleaving forms and empty spaces, as in the best of the Moore sculptures.
Jean Arp - Idol
The Jean Arp ‘Idol’ is also remarkable. However, the exhibition suffers from a very unpractical labeling system which requires the visitors to switch their attention from the works to small labels on the walls in order to map the sculptures grouped in quasi-random order. More explanation material would also have improved the visiting experience.