Five Gazes Backwards

The Edmond de Rothschild Center in collaboration with The Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art—The South Gallery, presents a new exhibition in the South Gallery featuring five original projects by graduates of the Edmond de Rothschild Center Network. The artists were selected through a public call for entries and this is their first extensive display in a museum exhibition.

At the heart of the creative act is the human urge to conjure a world ab nihilo to turn thought into matter and dream into reality. In Jorge Luis Borges’s story The Circular Ruins, this desire is realized when a person arrives at the ruins of an ancient temple with the aim of performing magic: to dream a man and make him a reality. Night after night, he creates him in his imagination, limb by limb, only to discover that he himself is nothing but someone else’s dream. At the moment of discovery, the protagonist realizes that he is part of an endless chain of dreams. This gives expression to the understanding that each person is part of an endless stream of creation, part of a larger story—one that has started before him and will continue after him—and raises questions about origins, reality, and context.

The five artists before us look at past traditions, embark on ancient stories, rituals and rites, as well as personal narratives of family history and youthful memories—and return to the “ruins,” to what no longer exists. This return takes place through an encounter with legends, myths, and archetypes, and entails thinking about expressions of belonging, their own voices, and their place in the present.

The exhibition presents five new bodies of work, created out of personal search processes: Noga Or-Yam’s sound installation, based on a frank dialogue with her father and an inner meditative practice, is concealed within a temporary tent and offers an intimate space for listening and being. Liz Marr presents a series of oil and charcoal paintings based on references from art history and allegorical-theological literature from the late Middle Ages, creating a new mythology with its own unique appearance, identity, and rules. Yuval Naor presents a series of treated photographs of white crows, of a documentary nature, in which he blurs the line between documentation and fiction while referring to Classical mythology. Olga Stadnuk presents a circular structure that brings to mind ancient forms of convergence (such as around a well or a bonfire) and connects, through a “collective consciousness,” the movement of those present into a shared experience of a single plural body. Chen Flamenbaum presents a sculptural installation featuring a family of hybrid figures and miraculous mythological creatures—in a space that straddles Pop culture, consumer products, art-historical icons, and legends from distant cultures that shaped his childhood landscapes and consciousness.
While each of these artists operates in a different artistic medium, all five look beyond it to recurring archetypes—bird, well, fire, tent, totem. Together, they offer a multifaceted and thought-provoking experience of ourselves as creators of our world and our stories and at the same time as being created by stories that preceded us.

Herzliya Museum Director and Chief Curator: Dr. Aya Lurie

Opening Hours:
Wed, 4 to 7 pm; Fri and Sat 9:30 am to 2 pm
Admission requires registration on the Museum website
Please note that the number of visitors is limited per time slot.

Entry via MUZA – the Museum’s Education Wing
13 Sarah Malkin Street, Herzliya
Tel. 09-9551011