August 28, 2012 – What is real? What is artificial? An exhibition with a majority of Israeli artists will explore the concept of nature and challenge the gap between traditional perceptions of “nature” and “culture” in UNNATURAL, an exhibition on view at the Bass Museum of Art (Miami Beach) September 9 – November 4, 2012. The exhibition is curated by Tami Katz-Freiman and is supported in part by Targum Shlishi. Other funders include the OstrovskyFamily Fund as well as the Consulate General of Israel to Florida & Puerto Rico, and Artis – Contemporary Israeli Art Fund.
The works on view in the exhibition use various strategies to represent diverse concepts of nature while also questioning conventional ways of presenting the natural world. Many of the artists in the exhibition are Israeli-born, which lends a political accent to the works. “In the contemporary Israeli context it is impossible to disassociate the landscape from its political resonances and from the multiple narratives that surround it. Landscape imagery and representations of nature in contemporary Israeli art today are rarely naive, and certainly not romantic. They are scorched by the fire of conflict and marked by the fervor of internal controversy,” according to Katz-Freiman.
A wide range of media is represented in the exhibition including video, photography, sculpture, and installation. Many of the works, created as they are in our hyper-technological age, reflect ironically on artificial environments in which one is not certain what is real and what is not.
“Bringing the works of these Israeli artists to Miami Beach and mounting this exhibition is no small feat. We are pleased to lend our support to UNNATURAL, a fascinating exhibition that explores the boundaries between nature and technology in our postmodern world. Many of these Israeli artists will be new to the exhibition’s visitors and we are pleased that our support will help bring these works to new audiences,” says Raquel Rubin, co-director of TargumShlishi.
Artists in UNNATURAL
Participating artists include: Boaz Aharonovitch, Aziz + Cucher, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot and Ariane Michel, Einat Arif-Galanti, Blane De St Croix, Rose-Lynn Fisher, Ori Gersht, Meirav Heiman and Yossi Ben Shoshan, Hilja Keading, Freddy Shachar Kislev, Sigalit Landau, Dana Levy, Tobias Madison, Richard Mosse, Gilad Ratman, Samantha Salzinger, Tomer Sapir, Yehudit Sasportas, Michal Shamir, Uri Shapira, Jennifer Steinkamp, Gal Weinstein, Wendy Wischer, and Guy Zagursky.
About Tami Katz-Freiman, curator of UNNATURAL
Tami Katz-Freiman is an art historian, curator, and critic based in Miami. Until recently, she served as the chief curator of the Haifa Museum of Art (2005-2010). She has curated numerous group and solo exhibitions in prominent museums in Israel and the US, where she lived and worked between 1994 and 1999. Between 2008 and 2010 she taught in the Art History Department at Tel Aviv University and in the International Curatorial Studies Program of the Kalisher Art School in Tel Aviv. She has published extensively in books, catalogues and magazines devoted to contemporary art. Her most recent exhibition Critical Mass: Contemporary Art from India (co-curated with Rotem Ruff) is currently on view at the Hertaand Paul Amir new building of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
About Targum Shlishi
Targum Shlishi is dedicated to providing a range of creative solutions to problems facing Jewry today. Premised on the conviction that dynamic change and adaptation have historically been crucial to a vibrant and relevant Judaism and to the survival of its people, Targum Shlishi’sinitiatives are designed to stimulate the development of new ideas and innovative strategies that will enable Jewish life, its culture, and its traditions to continue to flourish. For more information on the foundation, visit its website at www.targumshlishi.org.
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