MAYA ZACK
Counterlight
September 19 - November 19, 2016
Works
Artworks
Press Release
MLF | Marie-Laure Fleisch is pleased to announce Counterlight, Maya Zack’s second solo-show in the gallery following her 2012 exhibition; now the artist presents her latest video realized this year which concludes the trilogy started with Mother Economy (2007) and then Black and White Rule (2011). A series of drawings and collage also accompany the video.
Maya Zack's artistic research develops through various media – video, installation, drawing, photography, sculpture – and explores issues connected with the elusive and fragile characteristic of memory, of time, and history. In this wide-ranging exploratory journey laced with many artistic and cinematographic citations and historical references, Maya creates her personal interpretation of reality in an attempt to reconstruct, reorganise and control it. The result is a complex narrative which creates a recognisable and distinctive language in her work.
The female protagonists of the video trilogy enact solitary and apparently unconnected actions in parallel with an ever-more insistent rhythm in their attempt to measure and classify reality which they obsessively record. Visually, the videos are set indoors, in archives or domestic ambiences dominated by the presence of sheets of paper dissected with almost scientific precision. Aimed at capturing and decoding reality, the protagonists’ actions construct in the minds of the spectator an image of both the present and the past through a new declination of memory.
The video Counterlight, which is also title of the exhibition, was first presented at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in April 2016, and focuses on the poet Paul Celan, whose ouvre develops a unique testimony of the suffering and horror that he experienced and forms a complex discussion on the representation of memory. Celan's thought led Adorno, following an intense epistolary exchange, to rethink his initial position, which denied the possibility of poetry after Auschwitz, and to state: “perennial suffering has as much right to expression as a tortured man has to scream” [Negative Dialectic]. The video, metaphorically set in the inner of a bellows camera, is presented like a surreal physical and mental journey into the poet's past, evoked by a woman archivist who reconstructs the fragments and memories through writings, photographs, papers and photographic negatives. In the background we hear excerpts of original recordings of Celan reciting passages from his poetical work “Engführung”. With pencil, awl, brush, scissors, and cutter, like an alchemist the resercher intervenes to create this reconstruction: compulsively stapling sheets, underlining words, writing numbers, projecting slides, filling in tables, assembling phrases and words together. On a large map, she circles the poet’s hometown Czernowitz, and with surgical precision she measures, cuts and incises the materials, and places old photographs along the roads leading to it. These images take on the function of stage side wings which penetrate into the town, which is brought to life under our very eyes with its sounds, and then to be symbolically covered in ashes. Then a domestic scene, where we ideally meet the poet's mother (perished in a concentration camp) who is busy kneading the dough for the traditional Challah bread. These last sequences, in which images of life and death are interwoven, also evoke the setting of the previous work Living Room (2009) and the actions carried out by the protagonist in the video work Mother Economy. The artist, who over the past few years has shown particular interest for the female figures that were part of Paul Celan's existence, has dedicated this work to the memory of her mother.
Maya Zack uses art as an instrument to contrast the absence and the loss of memory by a personal process of elaboration which dialogues with both reality and imagination. The cohesion of historical events and the personal sphere of the protagonist give rise to a poetical fusion which lends a new voice to memory and casts light onto past events, subtracting them from oblivion and restoring their identity.
The video was produced with the support of the Ostrovsky Family Fund; the Israel Lottery Council for Culture & Arts; Artis Grant Program; Outset Contemporary Art Fund; a grant from the Claims Conference; and Kronos Aerial Photography.
Artist Biography
Born in Israel, 1976.
Lives and works in Tel Aviv.
Education
2000
B.F.A Magna Cum Laude at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Fine Art Department, Jerusalem, Israel
2000
Student Exchange Program at Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee, Germany
2012
M.A., Interdisciplinary Arts Program, Arts Faculty at Tel Aviv University, Israel
Solo Exhibitions
2020
Maya Zack, la mémoire en action, Mahj - Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaisme, Paris, France
2016
Memory Trilogy, MLF | Marie-Laure Fleisch, Brussels, Belgium
Counterlight, MLF | Marie-Laure Fleisch, Rome, Italy
Maya Zack: Counterlight, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
2014
Outlined Absence, Taiga Creative Space, St. Petersburg, Russia
The Mystical Shabbat, Alon Segev Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
2013
The Shabbat Room installation, part of the new permanent exhibition Unsere Stadt! Judisches Wien bis heute. The Jewish Museum, Vienna, Austria
Maya Zack: videos at Moving Image video fair, London, United Kingdom with Galleria Marie-Laure Fleisch
Special project, The Jewish Museum, Vienna, Austria
Apparent Death, Alon Segev Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
2012
Maya Zack solo show, Marie-Laure Fleisch Gallery, Rome, Italy
2011
Living Room, The Jewish Museum, New York, USA. Curator: Aviva Weintraub
Camera Obscura, curated by Marie Shek, Galerie Natalie Seroussi, Paris, France
2010
Mother Economy - video and drawings, curated by Avi Feldman, CUC Gallery, Berlin, Germany
Living Room, Alon Segev Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
Black and White Rule – Open Set, Yaffo 23, Bezalel Gallery, Jerusalem, Israel
2009
Reading Room, curated by Marie Shek, Bialik House Museum, Tel Aviv, Israel
2008
Mother Economy, curated by Andrew Ingall, The Jewish Museum, Media Center Gallery, New York, USA
Nalbishech Salmat Beton Vamelet, curated by Ziva Yelin, Be’eri Gallery, Kibutz be’eri, Israel
2005
Videos + Drawings, Alon Gallery, Ramat Hasharon, Israel
2004
Concrete and Cement, (with Raya Bruckenthal), Noga Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
Mockument, Alon Gallery, Ramat Hasharon, Israel
2002
The Baron E.T. von Home, (with Raya Bruckenthal), Artists Studios Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
2001
Hier seid Ihr zusammen, Kav 16 Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
Group Exhibitions (selected)
2021
Zoology, curated by Benedict Vandaele, Zebrastraat, Ghent, Belgium
2020
Bodyscapes, curated by Dr. Adina Kamien-Kazhdan, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
As She Transforms, curated by Irena Gordon, Jerusalem Print Workshop, Jerusalem
Film screening, curated by Judith Schlossberg, Keter Cinema, Ma’amuta, Hansen House, Jerusalem
2019
Counterlight, film screening, FIFA- Festival International du Film sur l'Art - Musée McCord - Théâtre J. Armand Bombardier, Montreal, Canada$
Kartonage, Kupferman Collection, Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot, Israel
MEMORY TRILOGY, film screening, 27th Jewish Film Festival Vienna, Jewish Museum Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Walk the Line, as part of The 7th Biennale for Drawing | Traces VII – Action Line, curated by Irena Gordon, The Jerusalem Print Workshop, Jerusalem, Israel
Winners of the Ministry of Culture and Sport Prizes in Art and Design for 2017 and 2018, The Ashdod Art Museum, Ashdod, Israel
2018
Hidden Workers, Coreana Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea
On Guard, Hansen House, Jerusalem, Israel
Local Contemporary Print, curated by Irena Gordon and Tamar Gispan-Greenberg, Jerusalem Print Workshop, Jerusalem, Israel
Counterlight, film screening, ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival, Munster, Germany
CONSTRUCTING THE WORLD: ART AND ECONOMY 1919-1939 AND 2008-2018, curated by Dr. Eckhart Gillen, Dr. Ulrike Lorenz and Dr. Sebastian Baden, Mannhein Kunsthalle, Mannhein, Germany
NeuLicht II - Land von Salz und Honig, curated by Avi Feldman and Nirith Nelson, Neulicht Festival, Zurich, Switzerland
Evoking Reality, curated by Renate Wiehager and Nadine Isabelle Henrich, Daimler Contemporary, Berlin, Germany
2017
Menorah – Cult, History and Myth, Musei Vaticani – Braccio di Carlo Magno, Vatican City
2016
Under the Press of History, The Jerusalem Print Workshop, Jerusalem, Israel
Das Kapital. Schuld- Territorium - Utopie, Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, Germany
2015
Bibliology, Petach Tikva Museum of Art, Petach Tikva, Israel
Without Flour, The Negev Museum of Art, Be'er Sheba, Israel
2014
Back to Berlin, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Herzilya, Israel
Drawingroom, curated by Peter Weiermair, Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck, Austria
2013
Drawingroom, curated by Prof. Peter Weiermair, Ursula Blickle Stiftung, Kraichta, Germany
2012
Pluriel-Regards sur l'art contemporain israélien, Villa Emerige, Paris, France
Private/Corporate VII - Doron Sebbag Art Collection, ORS Ltd., Tel Aviv, and Daimler Kunst Sammlung, Stuttgart/Berlin, curated by Renate Wiehager, Daimler Art Collection, Berlin, Germany
In Action, Performance, Actionism and Concept, from the Charim Collection, Salon Dahlman, Berlin, Germany
The Winners, Recipients of 'Idud Hayetzira' Award by the Israeli Ministry of Culture, curated by Naomi Aviv, Petach Tikva Museum, Petah Tikva, Israel
3rd Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, curated by Kathrin Becker, Russia
Recipients of 'Idud Hayetzira' Award by the Israeli Ministry of Culture, Petach Tikva Museum, Petah Tikva, Israel
2011
Magic Lantern: Recent Acquisitions in Contemporary Art, curated by Suzanne Landau, Amitai MendelsohnIsrael Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
Heimatkunde (How German is it? 30 Artists' Notion of Home) Jewish Museum, Berlin, Germany
2010
Neo-Barbarism, curated by Naomi Aviv, Noam Segal Rothschild 69, Tel Aviv, Israel
Rupture & Repair, Adi Prize for Jewish Expression in Art and Design, curated by Emily Bilski, Aviva Kat-Manor, Artists House Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
Ark, curated by Ido Barel, Mani House, Leumi Gellery, Tel Aviv, Israel
Suspended Spaces #1, Maison de la culture, Amiens, France
2009
Childhood Stories, curated by Yael Katz Ben Shalom, whiteBOX e.V., Kultfabrik Gallery, Munich, Germany
Art TLV, curated by Edna Moshensohn, The Tel Aviv Art Biennale, Tel Aviv, Israel
Drama of Identities, curated by Irena Gordon, Beth Hatefutsoth Museum, Tel Aviv, Israel
Seafaring-route, Tel Aviv. Berlin. Beirut, curated by Yael Katz Ben Shalom, Artneuland Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Paper Works, curated by Ronit Sorek, The Israel Museum, Anna Ticho House, Jerusalem, Israel
Reel Mothers, curated by Andrea Liss, California Center for the Arts Museum, Escondido (CA), USA
Tel Aviv Mon Amour, curated by Galit Semel, The Office Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
Shirat Ha'beton, curated by Yehudit Mezkel, Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv, Israel
2008
Invideo, International Exhibition of Video Art and Cinema Beyond, Milan, Italy
From Punk To Pink, Moti Hasson Gellry, NY, USA
Raum für Video, Philipp von Rosen Galerie, Cologne, Germany
Merma(i)d, curated by Raya Bruckenthal, Inga Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
Rishon Le’zion Biennale, Rishon Le’zion, Israel
Celeste Kunstpreis Finalists, At the former Patzenhofer Brauerei-Friedrichshöhe, Berlin, Germany
Dead End, curated by Diana Dallal, Rosenfeld Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
Goyim, The New Gallery, Teddy Stadium, Jerusalem, Israel
2007
Guilt & Gelt, curated by Yael Katz Ben Shalom, Artneuland Gallery Berlin, Germany
2006
Videoland, curated by Yael Katz Ben Shalom, Artneuland Gallery, Berlin, Germany
The Israel Museum, curated by Amitai Mendelsohn, Jerusalem, Israel Culture Ministry Award Winners
2005
Not Alone, curated by Ruti Director, The Haifa University Gallery, Haifa, Israel
The Drawing Biennale, The Jerusalem Artists House, Jerusalem, Israel
2004
A Homage to Hanoch Levin, curated by Daniella Talmor, The Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa, Israel
2002
Positive Discrimination, curated by Ellen Ginton, The Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
Something Local, the Digital Art Lab, Holon, Israel
Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, South Korea
2001
The Armoury Show, curated by Ellen Ginton, The Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
Grants / Awards / Residencies
2013
SIP Grant
2012
Israel Lottery Council Grant for the Arts
2011
Idud Hayetzira Award, The Israeli Ministry of Culture
Isracard and Tel Aviv Museum of Art Prize
Artis Grant Recipient
2011
International Summer Academy for Artists-Researchers Finland. Kuva - Finnish Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki, Finland
2010
Adi Prize for Jewish Expression in Art and Design, by Adi Foundation and Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
2010
JAI (Jewish Artists Initiative of Southern California), Los Angeles, USA
2009
The New Israeli Foundation For Cinema and Television
2008
Israel Lottery Council Grant For The Arts
Celeste Kunstpreis, Art Prize Berlin, 1st Prize Artist Category
Artis Grant Recipient
2007
Israel Lottery Council Grant For The Arts
The New Israeli Foundation For Cinema and Television
2005
The Center of Contemporary Art Fund for Video
The Young Artist Award, The Israeli Ministry of Culture
2002
The Center of Contemporary Art Fund for Video
Tel Aviv Municipality, The Arts Department
2000
Excellence Award, Bezalel, Academy of Art and Design, Fine Arts Department, Jerusalem, Israel
Film Awards for "Counterlight", "Mother Economy" & "Black and White Rule" (Videos)
2016
Winner, Short Film Competition, Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival, Jerusalem, Israel
2011
Special Award "Poetry of The Image", The 13th Intonational Film Festival, Patras City, Greece
2008
Special Mention, Imaginaria International Film Festival, Conversano (BA), Italy
Celeste Kunstpreis, Berlin, Art Prize - Artist Category Award
Special prize "Ideas Museum", Int. Festival of Independent Cinematography "KinoLev", Lviv, Ukraine
2007
Best Foreign Film Award, Szemletek Visionaudial Film Festival – Pec's, Hungary
Students Jury Special Prize, Szemletek Visionaudial Film Festival – Pec's, Hungary
Collections
Public, corporate and private collections include:
Israel Museum Jerusalem, Israel
Jewish Museum Berlin, Germany
Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel
Beth Hatefutsoth Museum Tel Aviv, Israel
ORS Doron Sebbag Art Collection Tel Aviv, Israel
SIP-The Shpilman Institute for Photography, Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israel
Alongside international private collections