The Van Leer Institute

Opening Events

Address: Jabotinsky St. 43

Tuesday 19.03.2024 at 18:00

Closing Date: Friday 19.04.2024 (time will be announced)

Seek My Face

Curator: Giorgia Calo

Artists Etti Abergel, Yifat Bezalel, Veronica Botticelli, Alice Cattaneo, Silvia Giambrone, Loredana Longo, Maria Elisabetta Novello, Alice Schivardi, Khen Shish, Tomaso Binga

Seek My Face features the works of Italian and Israeli artists from different generations. The exhibition’s title quotes a phrase from King David's Psalm 27.

Ten female artists come together to share personal and political thoughts; their artistic expressions often characterized by a potent sense of transgression and disturbance. 

Through paintings, sculptures, installations, performances, and videos, the exhibition showcases an adeptness of female creativity in making use of diverse media and techniques to communicate messages.

The exhibition is an invitation to look beyond the work, analyzing the representation of the Self; an invitation to explore the multiple facets of art and creativity, and a reflection on the human desire for connection, discovery, and transcendence.

The Seventeen: Iron Flock

Curator: Samantha Baskind, Distinguished Professor of Art History at Cleveland State University

Artist: Archie Rand

Archie Rand debuts his new series, The Seventeen: Iron Flock. Among the women featured in the loosely painted, electrically charged canvases are the well recognized, such as Sarah and Judith, and the lesser known, such as Asenath and Rahab. 

The exhibition is a continuation of Rand’s forty-year artistic enterprise, exploring the Bible and Jewish texts in serialized paintings conceptually informed by twentieth-century culture. 

His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, and Bibliothèque Nationale de France, among many others.

Dress Code

Curator:  Avishay Wohl

Artist: Michal Rejwan

Dress Code by Michal Rejwan expresses the meaning of clothing and garments in different cultures. The exhibition presents seven large oil paintings, each of which shows men in dresses.

Michal Rejwan’s paintings were inspired and created against the background of modern life in Jerusalem, informed by the illustrious tradition of classical art. Her paintings discuss the nature of ideas and their changing weight in our lives; she demonstrates how ideas, materials, and techniques can be mixed to create new perspectives. 

Out of her great love for natural colors and raw materials, Michal has created a unique chromatic intensity expressive of tradition and renewal.

Nof-Nof-Nof: Landscape in Contemporary Israeli Painting

Tov veYafe Beit Midrash for Art and Design

Curators: Nechemia Boaz and Victor Ryabchin

Artists: Shaul Shats, Oded Feingersh, Gideon Holland, Silvia Bar-Am, Meir Appelfeld, Yona Levi Grossman, Arnon Kaplan, Yosef Yosade, Michael Morgenshtern, Aviya, Avigail Fried, Nechemia Boaz, Ilan Baruch, Dalia Katav Arieli, Julia Shulman, Tirza Freund, Alex Kremer, Leonid Balaklav, Aviva Blum, Michael Yakhilevich, Pnina Frank, Ofer Lellouche, Marek Yannai

Stepping out of the studio and into a natural landscape is a foundational act in the painting tradition and in the learning process. From the beginning of Zionism to the early years of the State of Israel, Israeli landscape painting was a popular genre and treated to a rich diversity of expression by leading Israeli artists. 

Over the years, landscape painting became neglected and marginal in the artistic mainstream. However, even when Israeli artists did not deal with it directly, the landscape was still a formal or expressive point of departure.

Israeli artists’ engagement with their landscape highlights the deep connection between the people of Israel and their land. This special bond is even described in the words of the biblical prophets as a marriage between husband and wife.

In this exhibition, we are excited to give renewed and comprehensive expression to landscape painting through the works of Israeli artists from different generations and different schools of thought.