This is a first in a series of articles about the exhibitions we visited last Saturday at the Eretz Israel Museum
The 6th Biennale for Israeli Ceramic
The first exhibition we visited was the show that every two years gathers the most interesting works in the field of ceramics. You can get more information about this event open until June 15 on the Web page of the exhibition .
in the exhibition
110 artists and designers participate in the impressive show this year. Beside the works several videos are presented in the exhibition showing techniques of creation in ceramics which range from the very traditional ones, some practiced in this part of the world for many centuries until the most modern inventions and the industrial scale production.
Avner Singer - Two Chimneys
The Two Chimneys by Avner Singer use industrial landscape forms combined with techniques that remind the old painted pottery craft practiced in the area.
Batia Malka - Endo, Baby
A few artists deal with the human forms in a disturbing way. For example Batia Malka uses earthenware techniques which remind the tourist shops objects that can be bought in Europe to create a very different type of representation.
Varda Yaton - Tikun (Corrections)
Varda Yaton creates a similar effect, but there is not polish in her manner, just a brute and direct expression that talks about the unsettling environments of our life.
Orly Montag - Made of China
Orly Montag is still a student in ceramics design at the Bezalel school in Jerusalem. Her fantasy dolls bring up forms inspired from the extra-terrestrial stories with a sudden twist of violence that connects her work with the ones of the previous two artists above.
Miri Fleisher - Nakba
A few works speak directly about the complex political situation in our area. As the Arab artists are absent from the show (or maybe there are a few but I did not remark them) it is the Jewish artist Miri Fleisher who talks about Nakba in one of the most interesting works in the exhibition with the empty space of a melted Palestinian jug (a zir) creating in the air a form of absence.
Raya Stern - Jaffa - Tel Aviv
Raya Stern uses the traditional techniques to show on a pair of twin glazed earthenware vases the representation of the two cities of Tel Aviv and Jaffa, so close that they meld geographically, and yet so different in history and destiny.
Eva Avidar - Common Israeli Coackroach
In a more allegoric manner Eva Avidar (born in Romania in 1960) talks about the same reality at a very different level and using a sophisticated mix of materials.
Gad Charny - Endless Column Nr. 3
A reflection of Romania can be found also in the work of Gad Charny, with a very different variant of the Endless Column. The verticality of Brancusi is replaced by hesitation, and the game of geometry is created by an alternation of clay ups with lit plastic bottles – something very different from what the artists has created lately.
Talia Tokatly - Circle of Dogs
Talia Tokatly created for this exhibition a composition fixed on a wall, which creates an interesting and unusual relation between the objects and the viewer.
Iris Zohar - Onion Vase
Last, here is a beautiful work by designer Iris Zohar, whose objects fill in the space with an elegance of the form and a tranquility otherwise present in very few other works in this exhibition which seems to reflect the trepidations of a rather agitated moment in time.