Israel's art round up: Pink Front and Art in the Red 

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1 – Catch the tail-end of the Full Recognition group exhibition at The Refrigerator. Curated by Moshe Ash and conceptually led by Jessica Nevo, the exhibition includes two works by Yaniv Segal. 

The first is a black wall on which the words ‘Sorry I was hurt’ are written in pink; the second is a pink wall on which the words ‘We are all collaborators’ are written in black.

“Pink, I think, is a very political color,” Segal told The Jerusalem Post. “It represents the weak, femininity, [and] optimism.” 

A key-founder of Pink Front, an artistic-activist pro-democracy LGBT group, he pointed out that the Front created the pink Israeli flag with a heart at its center, raised in solidarity, and organized the drumming squad marching during the Balfour protests.

Unlike the red banner of Communism or the green streamer of Islam, pink is not associated with violence.

“For a non-violent protest, the power of images is very important,” Segal said. “The symbolic space is a living space.”

The police, he argued, have a monopoly on violence and are much better at it than protesters.

“This is why, if they take our drums, for example, we kid them that they are forming a band,” he told the Post. “We won’t win by force, but if we use jokes, we can make the dragon smaller – and then defeat it.”

In ‘We are all collaborators’, Segal makes several suggestions, including that we all, in some sense, cooperated with the blindness which led to October 7 – and still continue to do so by supporting the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.  

The usage of the term Mashtap (collaborator) is culture-hacking. Right-wing activists use this word to paint those who oppose the war as siding with the enemy. For Segal, the real collaborator is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who delivered suitcases full of money to Hamas for years.

“We share the action,” he explained. “The establishment wants you to believe it cannot be beaten, but the world is full of struggles that were successful. People working together ended the power of the church and the institution of slavery,” he added. “Gay people are no longer seen in the eyes of the law as criminal Sodomites.”

What reason is there to think only Israel is a land beyond change?  

Nevo will lead a workshop on Transitional Justice at 11 a.m. This will be followed by a healing ritual led by dancer Tamar Binyamini at 1:30 p.m. An historical archive of activism and conflict resolutions will become available to the public after this event. 

90 HaHashmonaim St. Call 050-774-9923 to sign up for events or visit hamecarer.co.il to learn more.   

EIN HAROD 

Visit the Masterpieces exhibition at the Mishkan Museum of Art and marvel at paintings by 47 Israeli artists who repeat works of former great masters. 

Curated by Avi Lubin and shown until Saturday, February 15, the exhibition includes reenactments of Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix, painted by Anna Lukashevsky, and The Portrait of Jane Seymour by Hans Holbein the Younger, created by Dvir Cohen Kedar.

“The exhibition exists on two parallel plains,” Lubin said. “Western Art from the Renaissance to Picasso and that of local art [Israeli art].” 

He added that it was, and is, common practice among artists to repaint great past works. Rubens painted works by Titian, and Picasso painted works by Velázquez. This practice, he concluded, “allows artists to cling to the past but, at the same time, make totally new works.”

Thanks to the Holyland Civilians fashion line, it is also possible to take the art with you when you leave either in a tote bag inspired by “Leda and the Swan” as painted by Jossef Krispel (NIS 90) or a shirt with a printed recreation of the 1594 painting Gabrielle d’Estrées and one of her sisters by Roni Taharlev (NIS 210).

Jonathan Hirschfeld will give a lecture about “The Renaissance as an Erotic Project” on Friday, November 1, at 11 a.m. and Doron Lurie will discuss the Baroque period and its aftermath on Friday, November 22, at 11 a.m. (NIS 60 per ticket). 

Guided tours of the exhibition are offered as part of the admission fee to the exhibition (NIS 46 per adult) each Thursday at 11 a.m. with English tours available upon request. 

Call (04) 6486038 to book. To view and purchase the fashion items, visit https://holylandcivilians.com/ .

HERZLIYA

UNTIL THE LAST RUT – Is a photography exhibition by Marina Furman Levi that offers powerful scenes from the everyday farming work still being carried out at Kibbutzim Be’eri, Nahal Oz, and other communities near the Gaza border.

Zionist leader Joseph Trumpeldor expressed that wherever the plough of the Hebrew farmer makes the last rut, that place will be the border of the Jewish State – linking love of the land to living on it.

Shown until Monday, November 11, this is an uplifting and unusual perspective on communities wrecked with pain that are still holding on to their fields. 

It is possible to purchase the works; all proceedings will be given to farming communities affected by the October 7 Hamas terror attack. 

Land Rover Jaguar Dealership, 26 Maskit St. Usual working hours, free admission.

ART NEWS

GUERCHON GALLERY – Began when its owner, Zohar Bernard Cohen, inherited a painting from his late grandmother. “It was by David Peretz,” he told the Post, “[who was] often described as the Bulgarian Van Gogh.”

That painting led to a passion for art, which eventually became a personal collection containing thousands of works.

 Usually, art collections and auctions are spheres inhabited by people who are slightly longer in the tooth or second and third generations and who continue the family business, so Bernard Cohen was met with interest and support when he began his path.

Eventually, he opened his own gallery roughly a year and a half ago. “As a gallery owner,” he emphasized, “I only show what I love.”

Sadly, a recent water-pipe leakage in the building led to nearly one-third of the art works stored at the gallery being extensively damaged.

These works included the original painting by Peretz as well as a self-portrait by Jewish-Polish painter Dawid Morzyński.

“The damage seems, from my perspective, like an extinction event of an entire animal species,” Bernard Cohen added.

The gallery now shows works by Pinchas Shaar, who was able to learn from a wide range of masters, from Picasso to Keith Haring; Cohen considers Shaar a brilliant colorist. 

Patrons will be able to view works loaned to an earlier Shaar exhibition held at the Moshe Castel Museum curated by Alek D. Epstein. The two men also share an admiration for painter Baruch Elron, a master of Surrealist Jewish painting.

117 Iben Gavirol St. Tel Aviv. Open within usual working hours. The gallery offers a free evaluation service of artworks. Call 050 944 1515 or Email guerchongallery@gmail.com to learn more. 

ART IN THE RED – Curator Ravit Harari has been fired from Ramat Hasharon Contemporary Art Gallery, despite doing outstanding work during the past five years and the gallery being on the cusp of gaining state support from the Ministry of Culture.

This follows the closing of the Ramla Contemporary Art Center and the termination of its curator, Smadar Sheffi, and the dismissal of Gaby Hamburg Fhima from her position as curator of the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens art gallery in March due to budget concerns.

“A month after I was fired, I learned [that] various budgets I worked on were obtained. This includes funding for a large project that would never have come into being without all the work I did in the last two years,” Fhima said. “I was not invited to return.”

New regulations the Culture Ministry is about to introduce will lead to the closure of 20 more galleries in the span of the next three years, Head of the Union of Curators Elad Yaron warned; this means one third of the recognized art galleries all around Israel.

Yaron remarked that dozens of galleries and museums up north are bolted due to the ongoing clashes with Hezbollah and that the number of school trips to museums and art spaces, which once served as a source of revenue, has rapidly declined. 

The Culture Ministry itself might be liquidated with the Netanyahu administration reportedly considering shutting it down alongside four others: the Ministry of Regional Cooperation, the Ministry for Social Equality, the Ministry of Settlements, and the Ministry for Diaspora Affairs.

Should all five ministries be closed, roughly three billion NIS will be saved. 

“The philanthropists purchased ceramic vests for IDF combat troops,” Yaron dryly noted, “and now they have no more cash to give.” 

Art Roundup is a monthly glimpse at some of the finest art exhibitions and events currently shown across the country. Artists, curators, and collectors are welcome to send pitches to hagayhacohen@yahoo.com with “Art Roundup” in the email subject.