|
|
Page:12
Caught in the Thicket Caught in the Thicket : The Fourth Biennale for Drawing in Israel Artists' House , Ticho House , The Jerusalem Print Workshop , Agripas 12 Gallery , narratives . As in previous biennials , " Traces IV" comprises several exhibitions , staged by independent curators in artistic venues throughout central Jerusalem , under the titular umbrella "Caught in the Thicket " : "ComplexCity" at Agripas 12 Gallery ( curators : Yemima Ergas and Yochi Negev ); " Lost" at the Barbur Gallery ( curators : Avi Sabah and Yanai Segal ); "Flood " at the Jerusalem Print Workshop curator : Irena Gordon ); "Photographs : Gilad Ophir , Sharon 'ari" at the Ticho House ( curator : Timna Seligman ) . This cluster of exhibitions invokes additional interpretations and insights regarding the spirit of the thicket in art , opening them to mutual feedback ; it offers the viewer an experience wandering and scrutiny through the paths of the multifaceted , entangled , conflicted city of Jerusalem . spirit of the thicket is woven into the artistic act since Genesis - from the chaos that existed prior to the Creation to first childlike scribble . Its primordial , lawless , pre-cultural nature may have well led to its continued suppression in European art until its re-emergence in the modern era . According to Bernice Rose , two graphic innovations have shaped the history of modern drawing ; both touch upon the of the thicket or tangle : the Surrealist-automatic drawing the " collage aesthetic" ( cat . Drawing Now , Museum Modern Art , New York , 1976 ) . Automatic drawing was inspired by the ideology of Andre Breton , the founder of the Surrealist movement , who called for the liberation of art and human mind from the shackles of reason through " pure psychic automatism " which unveils the subconscious . The Surrealists , among them Arp , Ernst and Masson , developed various practices to call forth spontaneous , uncensored images and scribbles . Automatic drawing - the result of concept for the Fourth Biennale for Drawing in Israel , Traces IV / Caught in the Thicket , " initially evolved from a dialogue with previous exhibitions . In the three biennials held since the beginning of this decade , the state of contemporary drawing in Israel has been fully plotted : the diverse spectrum themes , styles and techniques , as well as the broad scope artists and art works , indicated the abundant expressions drawing and its validity as a major , vibrant medium whose boundaries are expanding into new fields , such as installation , hotography , and digital art . This pluralism posits the need to narrow the gaze and focus on the medium's most quintessential , traditional characteristic , the line , as an autonomous component in practice , and even more significantly - on its essence that eludes definition , it is easier to describe it by negation - the thicket undermines the boundaries of the object and avoids explicit images ; it retreats from the focal point into the background , from the static toward the evolving , from the clear to the ambiguous and suppressed . idiom of the thicket employs an abstract-modernist syntax that has been used in art for the past hundred years , is linked with such notions as deconstruction , automatic drawing , and action painting . Contemporaryartists implement language in various modes , from the investigation of abstract values and processes to representation of figures landscapes ; from exposure of the psychic realm to the metaphoric and conceptual arena . Spanning approximately one hundred works by 59 from different generations and styles , the exhibition takes the viewer through the halls of the historical building of the Artists' House , as if they were intertwined
|
|