A Station in Time 2023 / Group Exhibition

Exhibition of the First Studio Graduates for 2022-23 at The Small Gallery: Aviv La-Oz Kalif, Avia Haimi, Rinat Burg

Curator: Ravit lazer

Opening: Thursday, 31/8/2023 at 19:30

Closing: Saturday, 18/11/2023 at 14:00

The first studio scholarship invites the winners on a professional, human, and material adventure.  The one-year residency enables in-depth understanding of working with clay, technology research and learning about managing a studio, amongst other possibilities.  The exposure to exhibitions, a professional library and theoretical program as well as the close encounter with the professional practicing teaching team and artist residents gives them insight into various teaching methods, thought and creative processes. This enabled the winners of the scholarship to continue the work they began when studying and try out new directions, each with her own personal source of inspiration.

Aviv La-Oz Kalif

In the exhibition she presents a series of wheel-thrown porcelain light fixtures. Each ceramic light in the series combines a soft round movement and a sharp outline.  The contrast between them and the research of form makes each piece unique and part of a group.  The lights stand on their own and together they create a narrative of new forms and negative space adding another dimension.  The thin porcelain is translucent in natural light and depends on the thickness of the wall.  The illumination and quality of the light is only apparent at the end of the process.

Avia Haimi

Presents “Israeliana 2023” three still-life pictures telling a personal story of an Israeli maker at this point in time:

The first picture – Taste of Israel consists of seven sculptural objects using different ceramic techniques, representing a fruit or crop, produce of the land of Israel.  The fruits are at their peak, ripe before rotten, a clue to what lies ahead, their end.  The promised land of ancient times believed to be given by the Almighty, established 75 years ago; is there a connection between the promised land and the present reality?

The second picture – Tapuzina consists of functional objects from the kitchen at home: jugs, cups, squeezers, inviting the viewer to make orange juice or squeeze lemon on the salad. Orange juice is typical in an Israeli breakfast, marketed in supermarkets by a company Tapuzina which is part of the Yafora Corporation, which prides itself on values of human solidarity, equal employment opportunity, safe work environment, health insurance with special conditions, honesty and fairness and a high standard of ethical behavior and legal abidance. The Corporation supports free speech and an “open door policy” and mutual attentiveness.  An imagined Israeli vision or dream?

The third picture – The Gourmet & the Grotesque – three sculptural objects representing the end of the year and the beginning of the new year celebrations.  Apple, honey challah, a skull – all transient, maybe they will find a place in the Garden of Eden.

Rinat Burg

In the exhibition presents two series of works: Bones Series – wheel-thrown porcelain vessels for daily use decorated with a low relief stencil based on images from the last days of Pompeii: pottery, bones, and plaster casts of the victims in their last moments providing a glimpse into human culture, frozen in time by disaster.

Meat series – vessels printed with abstract patches echoing the symmetry of the human body and the Rorschach test expressing a range of meanings to a given reality, and the tension between beautiful and frightening.