The Israel Museum continued presenting exhibitions of contemporary art and is hosting for its third time, visitors to the center of Leumi Bet Mani House. The exhibit: "A third exhibition - from the collections of the Israel Museum" will open on March 23, 2012. Entrance was free to the public.
Previous exhibitions were presented at the Leumi Bet Mani house, with this collection continuing its goal of presenting artistic treasures from the Israel Museum.
Mani House, among the very first houses of the Ahuzat Bayit neighborhood, exemplifies a stage in Tel Aviv's urban development. This exhibition featured works from the Israel Museum collection, focusing on the modern city and the experience of living in it over the last one hundred years.
The city and the urban lifestyle have offered economic and cultural pulls ever since the Industrial Revolution in the mid-eighteenth century, and represent common life choices in our own days. Yet, the urban space is not only the product of a modernist utopia, but swarms with political, social, economic, and national forces, alongside routine personal practices that shape its layout and identity.
The Modernist architecture, street views, and the use of urban waste in several of the works in the exhibition served as common grounds for the artists' supposedly impartial contemplation of the formal characteristics of the cityscape. At times it is precisely the pristine, balanced play of geometric shapes that camouflages criticism about the consequences of urbanization. Daily life, consumerist culture, alienation, and political and social conflicts stand at the heart of yet another group of works reflecting an emotional human experience that also constitutes part of the urban fabric. In a number of works the city serves solely as the décor of a surreal, alternate reality, momentarily undermining the barriers of reason and the limitations it imposes.
The exhibit featured important artists from Israel and abroad, including Gilad Ophir, Nira Pereg, Doron Solomons, Ido Bar El, Absalom, Maurizio Cattelan, Philippe Ramette, Cao Fei, Hannah Starkey, Ann Lislegaard and others.
Curator: Sivan Eran
The exhibition was held between the dates of: March 23, 2012 and July 31, 2012, at the Leumi Bet Mani house.
Leumi Bet Mani house.
36 Yehuda Halevi Street
Tel Aviv,
Telephone: 03-5149492
The public was invited to attend. Entrance was free of charge.
Audio instruction was also available on site.
