Nathan Gottesdiener Foundation, the Israeli art prize 2010 / Shortlisted Artists
The winner: Jan Tichy
Jan Tichy: Installation no. 13
In Jan Tichy's decade-long artistic work the primal dialectic pair of reality's material—darkness and light—serves as a medium (photography, video), bject (dark rooms, projected light) and metaphor (exposure and concealment, knowledge and control versus disregard and submission). He thus posits the viewer within borderline situations that are socially, politically and sensually challenging. Architecture— one of humanity's greatest creations, and a characteristic expression and tool of authority that is relevant to all human lives—is the other participant in Tichy's work. Like light, it too appears as medium, object and metaphor.
Dor Guez: The Nation's Groves
The Nation's Groves ("Mataei Hauma") was a government-owned agricultural company that served in the 1950s as a branch of the Zionist enterprise, managing and maintaining the groves, vineyards and lands nationalized following the establishment of the state of Israel. It operated concurrent with the Custodian of Absentees' Assets, with Jewish and Palestinian laborers, until it was incorporated within the JNF in 1960. In a series of photos, videos and scans from private archives, the exhibition focuses on the Israeli forestation project and the work of The Nation's Groves company, while combining historical ethos with individual tales. The exhibition presents a structural, formal and contextual tension between the artificial and the natural, between imitation and origin: a tension between a culture struggling over its Jewish and democratic identity, and a culture rehabilitating itself in the shadow of plastic Christmas trees.
Shahar Yahalom: The Raspberry Land
Shahar Yahalom's sculptural installation was conceived over several years, ever since she happened upon an internet image of the destruction of the great dome of the St. James cathedral in Seattle. The dome collapsed on 2 February 1916, under the accumulation of 15 tons of snow. In parallel to the religious-architectural building collapsed by atural disaster, Yahalom's apocalyptic installation will spread out between axes of height and width; between an ink pool placed on the floor and an astronomical-like drawing on the gallery's ceiling.
Jury: Prof. Mordechai Omer, David Neuman, Daniella Luxembourg, Ellen Ginton, Nathan Gottesdiener