SHARON 		21.5.04 – 30.6.04

Curator: Joshua Simon

The exhibition Sharon suggests an unlikely connection between the diverse meanings of the name 
Sharon: the most affluent region in Israel, a girl’s name and the name of the Israeli PM. All these create a Sharonesque logic of “Bigger, Stronger and Possessive”.

1st floor:
Rami Maymon exhibits two landscape pieces: As If, a piece made of cut felt shows a scene where a man and a woman seat back to back, surrounded by bushes and an apple. These Adam and Eve are nothing but the logo of sportswear brand Kappa, the bushes are the Adidas logo, the apple is Apple and the bird in the sky is the symbol Lufthansa. This is the Sharon region landscape nowadays- with its strip malls and outlet centers. Maymon’s second piece Untitled, is a photograph assuming 3D presence in the gallery, the 4 meters long panoramic picture hangs down from the wall to the floor. It shows a short-cut in the upper-middle-class town of Ramat Hasharon, replete with both layers of garbage and the trees that the Sharon region is famous for. 
Shelly Federman, with her History-to-go, shows an archeology showcase. In it, are common jars that one can find on many lawns in traffic junctions. These jars are also used to decorate restaurants, lobbies and private villas. The piece gives an archeological report on The Land of Israel in its colonial era. These jars are a trope of the Israeli fabrication of “local” identity. Federman also displays the phone number of the jars’ manufacturer, member of the Jawad hamula from Hebron, who have been crafting such vases for more then 500 years. 
Itamar Jobani exhibits a chandelier made of an array fly-catchers. Houses in the Sharon region are often furnished with this object, a death trap for mosquitoes and flies.
Zvi Elhyani displays Sharon and the Prime Minister, presentation concentration on the architect Arieh Sharon and his 1949 Sharon Plan of Population Dispersal- geared towards the spreading of Israeli population along the country’s borders. This plan, which was fully executed, is in many ways, the DNA of Israeli official planning up until the settlements of today. Elhyani stretches a line from Arieh Sharon- an architect who acted like an army general, to Ariel Sharon- once an army general, when in office, acted as an architect, using bulldozers as war machines in his operations in the Gaza strip in the early the 70’s. Sharon (the PM), is realizing Sharon’s (the architect) plan (and recently he presented a Sharon Plan of his own).

2nd floor:
Carmit Gil is showing On the way to the Shikmim Ranch – an architect’s model of a red roofed house and a housing project. This model stresses both the territorial and social distance between Ariel Sharon’s vast estate (Hashikmim ranch), and between the town of Sderot – where Sephardic Jews were made to settle in the 50’s (as part of aforementioned Sharon’s Plan). 
Noa Yaari displays a Work for Exchange, a round painting with elements from the Sharon region (a train, a sunset and a tennis ball). The work is accompanied by a leaflet offering to exchange the painting for a brand new Suzuki jeep. 
While for Yaari the jeep is a status symbol, in Moshe Gershuni’s 1979 Arik Sharon and The Indians, the jeep appears in its military function. If Yaari sees the vehicle as a suburban fantasy, for Gershuni it is a refugee’s nightmare. 
For her Self Portrait as an Indian Girl, Maayan Strauss dressed up as an Indian and stood in front of the American Patriot missile launchers that were sent to defend Israel from Iraqi Squd missiles during the current American war in Iraq. Strauss is dressed as the ultimate victim of the conquest of America, while in this scene she’s not the evident victim – the missiles are there to protect her. 
Roy Chicky Arad is exhibiting three drawings – Lebanon (the country Sharon invaded when acting as Israel’s Defense Minister); A Blind Drawing of The Map of Israel; and Nicaragua, a one sleeved tank top, currently popular with teenyboppers.  The name of this Central American state, is synonymous with the murderess overseas American involvement. In the infamous Iran-Contra affair, the CIA funded the ultra-right-winged Contra terror troops in Nicaragua, with profits from weapon sales to Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran. 
Roee Rosen recasts Sharon’s 2001 winning election slogan “RAK SHARON YAVI SHALOM” (Only Sharon Will Bring Peace), as a grid of caskets buried underground (the final “peace” being death). Rosen employs a similar juxtaposition of words and image in his An Apartment to Rent, based on a famous Israeli children’s book by Lea Goldberg. Thus, a fable about good neighborship relates to suburban towns and their xenophobic selection committees. Recently, an appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court, enabled Adel and Iman Kaadan, Israeli-Palestinian citizens, to move into their house in the pastoral town of Katzir, after they were prevented of doing so for nine years, because they are Arabs. 
Boaz Arad’s photograph prepared especially for this exhibition was censored by the College’s committee, which is part of the exhibition but isn’t showed in the Kalisher gallery. The picture shows a young Asian women, wearing black lingerie, seated on a chair in a luxurious hotel room with her legs wide-open. Underneath her, as inscription reads: HACHAVA HASINIT (The Chinese Ranch - a famous battle in the 1973 war in the Sinai desert). The exibition of this piece was prevented because of threats of sanctions on government funding to the college hosting the exhibition. The photo was originally called from the internet, and is showing at the exhibition’s web site: www.sharon.alturl.com. The fact that this piece was censored became, I would argue, an immanent aspect of the exhibition, attesting the conditions leading to self-censorship in today’s Israel.
Ari Libsker shows his video An election Speech in Two Parts. The first was shot on Election Day (January 28 2003), at Basel st. in Tel Aviv – a hot spot for young and wealthy businessmen. The second speech was shot on Oxford st. in London during The Hague Court of Justice session regarding the IDF crimes in the Occupied Territories (February 23 2004). In the first video, Libsker delivers vacuous replicas regarding his identification with the Israelis’ fear of Terror. In the second video, he employs demagoguery to “explain” Israeli policy toward Terror. 
Galia Talmor in her video Gardening, adds more and more flowers to the already excessive bloom of the traffic circles of her home town Qfar Sava. These “flower-settlements” ridicule the grand gestures of Zionism – namely working the land and conquering it. 
Yair Garbuz put a series of Xerox images that show Hamidrasha College of Art in Ramat Hasharon. These pages were taken from his extraordinary 1978 book On the Way to the Cinema. The sequence, portraying leading teachers in the school, including the artist himself, opens and ends with the same image – a clay jar made by one of the students, the very same generic jar Shelly Federman highlights in her piece executed twenty-six years later.

3rd floor:
Yael Bartana’s video Kings of the Hill, presents jeeps, not only as a family car but also as an army vehicle. The ritual her video captures is a spectacle of masculinity, performed every Saturday on the dunes near the Sea&Sun project, between Tel Aviv and the affluent suburban city of Herzeliya. This excessive exhibition of testosterone provides a venue to the militaristic macho culture of the army, within civilian recreational activities.

The Artists:

Boaz Arad, b. 1956, Afula, Israel. Lives and works in Tel Aviv. Arad works mostly with video and teaches at Hamidrasha College of Art and at Talma Yalin School of Srts. His work gained many superlatives when shown at the Jewish Museum in New York Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art (2002). 

Roy Chicky Arad, b. 1976, Beer Sheva, Israel. Lives and works in Tel Aviv. Artist, musician, poet and journalist, Chicky represented Israel with his band Ping Pong in the 2000 Eurovision Song Contest, waving the flag of Syria, calling for peace. For this act he was fired from his job at Israel’s TV Channel 1. His poem The Owl participated in the 50th International Art Exhibition at the 2003 Venice Biennale.

Yael Bartana, b. 1970, Qfar Yechezkel, Israel. Lives and works in Israel and The Netherlands. She recently exhibited, among other places, at the Tate Modern in London (2004), at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in NY (2003), and the KW-Berlin (2003).

Zvi Elhyani, b. 1971, Petach Tikva, Israel. Lives and works in Tel Aviv. Architect and theorist, Elhyani’s main field of research is Post-WWII architecture. Teaches at the Architecture department of Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. Elhyani Collaborated on the Israeli pavilion for the 8th International Architecture Exhibition at the 2002 Venice Biennale. He’s currently working on a book on Oscar Niemeyer.

Shelly Federman, b. 1975, London, UK. Lives and works in Tel Aviv. Graduated from SVA in New York, Federman did production design for Independent feature film productions, exhibited at the MTV Music Awards show Moonman Sculptures, NYC Grand Central Station (2002). And regularly creates short films and video clips. Federman was invited to exhibit in the Israeli pavilion of this forthcoming 9th International Architecture Exhibition at the 2004 Venice Biennale.

Yair Garbuz, b. 1945, Givatayim. Lives and works in Ramat Gan, Israel. Director of the Hamidrasha College of Art. Garbuz is famous in Israel not only as a key figure in the Israeli Art scene, but also as a satirical writer.

Moshe Gershuni, b. 1936, Tel Aviv. Lives and works in Tel Aviv. Once a conceptual artist who, among other works, chanted prayers at museums’ rooftops and gallery spaces, Gershuni turned in the early 80’s into an expressionist painter, and is considered to be one of Israel's most important artists. Won the 2003 Israel Prize but refused to shake hands with Israel’s PM, Ariel Sharon. He was thus denied the prize. 

Carmit Gil, b. 1976, Nahariya, Israel. Lives and works in the Golan Heights. Gil’s Bus was shown at the 50th International Art Exhibition at the 2003 Venice Biennale. She opened her first solo exhibition Gallery Carpet at Galerie Frank, Paris (2004).

Itamar Jobani, b. 1980, Qfar Sava. Lives and works in Herzeliya. Graduated with honors the Hamidrasha College of Art in 2003. He studies cinema and philosophy at the Tel Aviv University.

Ari Libsker, b. 1972, Ma’ale Gilboa, Israel. Lives and works in Tel Aviv. Documentary filmmaker, his film Circumcision (2002), provoked a debate in Israel on the ancient Jewish tradition. His new film Stalag will be finished in 2005. The film portrays a forgotten 50’s Israeli pulp fiction erotic series, set in Nazi prisoner camps. 

Rami Maymon, b. 1976, Tel Aviv. Lives and works in Tel Aviv. Photographer and artist. Studied at Cooper Union of art and science in NYC and graduated with honors the MFA Program, Department of Fine Art, Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Tel Aviv. Maymon regularly contributes photographs to the French Purple magazine and teaches at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem.

Roee Rosen, b. 1963, Rehovot, Israel. Lives and works in B'nai Zion, Israel. Rosen's groundbreaking Live and die as Eva Braun was shown at the Jewish Museum in New York as part of Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art (2002). The exhibition was originally held at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem (1997), with threats by clerical and conservative politicians to close the museum. Since then Live and Die has was exhibited at the Palazzo Delle Papesse, Siena, and in NGBK, Berlin. Rosen's latest project, Justine Frank, cenetred on a fictional Belgian-Jewish, lesbian artist of the surrealist movement, was exhibited as a retrospective at the Herzliya Museum of Art (2003), an exhibition complemented by a book, Sweet Sweat, published in Tel Aviv by Babel. Part of Justine Frank's ouevre was shown at the exhibition, The Gift (2002-2003), which traveled in Europe and the US.

Maayan Strauss, b. 1982, Jerusalem. Lives and works in Jerusalem. Strauss had her first solo exhibition at the age of 20 at Givon gallery in Tel Aviv (an exceptional event being that Givon gallery is considered synonymous with the most renowned artists of the 60’s and 70’s). Strauss is studying towards her Bachelor’s degree in Architecture at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem.

Galia Talmor, b. 1976, Rehovot, Israel. Live and works in Tel Aviv. Graduated the MFA Program, Department of Fine Art, Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Tel Aviv.

Noa Yaari, b. 1976, Bazra, Israel. Live and works in Tel Aviv. Graduated with honors the Hamidrasha College of Art in 2003. 
Curator Joshua Simon, b. 1979, Tel Aviv. Lives and works in Tel Aviv. Filmmaker and poet, art critic for the Israeli business daily ‘Financial Globes’, former editor of the ‘University on Air’ at Galey-Zahal radio station, Simon is a member of the Baboon Group of young independent filmmakers and the Free Academy Israel. Curated I Slept with Ari Libsker at the Free Academy Pavilion of Art in Tel Aviv (2001), co-curated Imagine - 350 artists for co-existence (2002), was involved in Artistes Sans Frontierès’ project One Pink Rose - the first ever exhibition in an army prison, exhibited in the cells of the Refuseniks - soldiers who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories. Simon’s book of conversations with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shimon Peres Over Many Lives was published in 2003. He recently curated the Israeli retrospective of Amos Gitai’s films (Oct.-Nov. 2003). His short film The Radicals (2001), was screened in over 30 international film festivals, including the Berlinale Talent Campus (2003). This film has awarded Simon with the Jerusalem Cinematheque Award for Young Filmmakers (2001-2002). This coming July the film will be shown at the Anthology Film Archives in NYC as part of its NewFilmmakers Howl screenings. 

Contacts:

The Free Academy:	P.O.B 16277
			Tel Aviv 61162
			Israel
			thefreeacademy@yahoo.com

Joshua Simon:		jsimon@walla.co.il
			Tel: +972 54 78 25 04 8