The Tel Aviv-Jerusalem divide, or rivalry, is legend. 

On the extreme fringes of the intercity seesaw, at the western end there are those who refer to the coastal metropolis as The State of Tel Aviv and the exclusive realm of their cultural and physical existence. Meanwhile, in Jerusalem some think of Tel Avivians as “soft” or secular and out of touch with “real” Israeli culture, in the most derogatory sense.

Yoram Blumenkranz has no such discordant issues. He conveys that, and much more, in his new exhibition, “Yerushalayma,” currently up and running at the Agripas 12 cooperative art gallery. The show title translates as “To Jerusalem,” which goes a long way toward explaining the creator’s personal and artistic intent.

“I was born and grew up in south Tel Aviv,” he declares when we meet up at the gallery shortly after the opening. That may be so, but for Blumenkranz the Jerusalem connection has always been there, on all sorts of levels. “We are all Jerusalemites long before we are Tel Avivians,” he posits a little cryptically. 

He feels this is not a take-it-or-leave-it scenario. “As an Israeli, you can’t be indifferent toward Jerusalem. You have to have some kind of position on Jerusalem.”

As a former Tel Avivian myself who also spent over a decade as a resident of the capital, and that is after spending the best part of a year in the city on my first visit to the country half a century ago, I am no stranger to that line of thought.

Blumenkranz talks about his hometown – he now lives in the center of Tel Aviv – with passion but also unashamedly displays an emotional attachment to Jerusalem.

“I think it is much more culturally developed than Tel Aviv,” he suggests, adding that that feeds off an oxymoronic state of affairs. “I think it is by dint of the fact that people view Jerusalem as being more conservative that, from a Jewish standpoint, it has spawned more fascinating [artistic] variants which are not all conservative.” 

I will probably have to spend a bit of time fathoming that somewhat opaque notion, but I found the items in “Yerushalayma” attractive, some amusing, and all clearly have a subtext gurgling just below the surface.

The artworks

The works are predominantly based on everyday objects, in various states of repair, refashioned into fetching and quizzical forms that impart the artist’s sense of allegiance to his stomping ground, as well as his undisguised fondness for, and deep interest in, Jerusalem. 

There is, for example, a diptych-like brace called Sunrise and West, which straddles the corridor that leads from the gallery entrance to the main display area.

The occidental segment has a self-explanatory aesthetic, based on a bare substratum of sand. “That comes straight from the beach near my house in Tel Aviv, near Trumpeldor Street,” Blumenkranz declares. “That is a tangible piece of Tel Aviv.”

West is a polychromic, shiny consumerism-conscious affair with a pair of palm trees that draw the eye in until you get up close. Then you discern the jagged threatening edges of the shards of glass that make up the inviting seemingly arboreal spread, which serve as insouciant-looking bracketing components, gracefully arcing toward each other. The ground-level vegetation, on closer inspection, comprises sharp pieces of olive tins and bottles of arak. Not quite as docile as one may have first thought. 

It is, the artist says, a matter of scale. “These are olives which turn into sabras because of their miniature size.” Still, there does appear to be some disturbing undercurrent there.

Across the hallway, you see a common-or-garden domestic window shutter set with some junk and a light source lurking in the background. “This is called Sunrise,” Blumenkranz explains. “The LED bulbs light up gradually.” 

Much like the sun emerging above our eastern horizon, you might venture. One can quite easily imagine the early-morning sunshine making its way through the shutter slats and progressively insinuating its illuminating and warming presence on the capital and, thereafter, to the seaside urban sprawl.

The Sunrise-West twosome is presented as a kind of avatar of the cultural, political, ideological, and existential parameters of life in these parts. “These two works represent the thematic-spatial orientation of the exhibition as two conceptually contrasting points,” the artist expounds. “With regard to Israel, the west signifies the horizon which runs from north to south, and is also a metaphor for the illusive thing we are all trying to capture or associate with – the core of the tragedy of modern Judaism.”

We need, Blumenkranz believes, to look to the east if we are to glean any hope at all. Now that’s a timely message if I ever heard one. “The slowly rising light, from the LED bulbs, coming through the shutters, symbolizes the Jewish – utopian – continuum.”

Danger

One of the more intriguing, and initially puzzling, works comprises a nondescript furniture item with a cellphone lodged under one of the legs. 

“This is just an old metal chair I found outside near my home,” Blumenkranz recalls. The exhibit moniker – Event – suggests a phenomenon that has taken place all too frequently in the capital over the years. “Can you hear the sound of sirens?” he asks. I can indeed. “That sound is coming out of the phone.”

The chair is located near the large glass door and windows that lead to a balcony overlooking a traffic circle used by numerous vehicles during the course of any given day, naturally Shabbat excepted. Events, I note, in this part of the world, more often than not, infer some unwanted development involving violence and human injury. 

“That’s exactly right,” the artist rejoins. “Jerusalem has the image of being a dangerous city,” he adds. At that point, I thought that was just the Tel Avivian in him coming out, as a resident of the ostensibly safer coastal city.

However, I quickly learned that, as a self-confessed Jerusalemphile, Blumenkranz does not take the higher Tel Avivian ground. He was, in fact, pointing an accusatory finger at those who take a dim and condescending view of Jerusalem as a dark, frightening, if not primitive, place.

“There is this constant dialogue, from outside, from Tel Aviv, about Jerusalem being a very dangerous and violent city. I grew up in south Tel Aviv. I don’t think it is a less violent place.”

The telephone is also an intriguing choice. Here we have our most ubiquitous means of virtual – nonphysical – communication woven into a creation put together by a resident of Tel Aviv looking to impart his take on a city in which he is but a visitor, albeit a highly willing one. There is a darker factor in play here, too. 

“The phone is what we use to pass on information about disasters and terrible things that have happened,” he advises. He also wants to make a comment about the technology’s omnipresence. 

“We are almost completely surrounded by telephones. And we use them all the time, to the point where we can’t differentiate between what we see and hear on the telephone and the real thing.” Anyone who has ever espied someone taking a picture of a sunset rather than simply basking in its enticing, softening light and colors, and experiencing the moment unhampered by a screen, will get that.

Blumenkranz is clearly a dab hand at collating artifacts that have fallen into disuse and providing them with a new lease of aesthetic life. That, he says, comes naturally to him. 

“As a kid, I engaged in improvisation. I lived in Kiryat Hamelacha, where all the galleries are today. I’d cross the street, go to the garbage cans. I’d collect all sorts of discarded bits of industrial waste and engage in different crafts.”

Artist cooperative

“Yerushalayma” is Blumenkranz’s debut solo contribution to the Agripas 12 rollout. He is full of praise for the artist collective, which has been around for close to 18 years. As an independent venture, it proffers an unbridled vehicle for artistic expression unhampered by the constraints of political correctness or establishment-compliant ethos. 

However, as Blumenkranz cautions, that privileged, naturally scantily budgeted position may now be under threat. “I was invited to join a cooperative gallery which, to my mind, is an ideal format,” he declares. 

“That is particularly true in a field of art such as ours which is based on subsidies and officialdom, which makes the arts arena a place beset by interests and tensions that are unrelated to the act of art, rather to connections, power struggles, and hypocrisy.”

Blumenkranz believes that laissez-faire approach positively informs the way the group goes about its business. “The absence of a curator in the exhibition is natural. For me, my broadly democratic admission to the gallery, by its artists, is a curatorial act in its own right which is based on my record and the interest the artists found in me as a partner, also for group exhibitions.”

He expresses that mutual appreciation in one of the exhibits, a video work he calls In My Voice. “I recite the gallery members’ names as a dry roster of participants, which expresses the egalitarian spirit a format such as a collective gallery offers, as a profound salute to its conceptual and practical partnership.” That sounds delightful and, indeed, inspiring. 

But Blumenkranz warns that that seemingly idyllic state of affairs may not have long to run. “Despite the fact that I produced this exhibition some months ago, it has now become highly relevant. All the collective galleries in Israel are now imperiled following the Culture Ministry’s decision to cut its support for them.”

As has become abundantly clear, as we all struggle to cope with the challenges of our very emotional and physical existence these days, art and culture in general have provided an outlet and, yes, an escape, since just a couple of weeks or so after Hamas’s brutal attack on our civilians down south.

It would, to say the least, be a crying shame if that avenue of expression and appreciation were to be stymied, if not cut off in its prime, by the withdrawal of sorely needed assistance which any self-respecting civilized country must surely provide.■

‘Yerushalayma’ closes on November 23. For more information: agripas12gallery.com