Special event with Israeli artists from Columbia MFA Program
artis is a proud supporter of the Israel Artists Fund for Visual Arts at Columbia University and in December hosted an event with artist and Columbia teacher Jon Kessler to share the work of some of the outstanding Israeli artists and alumni from the Columbia program. Read more about the artists and see images from the event at the loft of Yaron at Jenny Leshem.
We encourage you to support current and future Israeli students in the Visual Arts Division by contributing to the Israel Artists Fund.
Guy Ben-Ner—Visual Arts 2003
guybenner@hotmail.com
Guy Ben-Ner’s recent video installation, Stealing Beauty at Gimpel Fils in London was a narrative about theft and poverty and was shot on location at IKEAS in Israel, Europe, and the United States. As in almost all of Guy’s work, the actors are himself and his family. Since graduating from our program, he has represented Israel in the 2005 Venice Biennale. This past summer he was included in the Münster Sculpture show. In 2006, after receiving the prestigious DAAD prize to spend a year in Berlin, he is still living there with his family. He is represented by Postmasters Gallery in New York, and Konrad Fisher Gallery in Düsseldorf.
Ohad Meromi—Visual Arts 2004
ohadmeromi@gmail.com
Ohad Meromi’s latest video work The Exception and the Rule is based on a lesser known Brecht play and was a standout at this year’s Lyon Biennale. Roberta Smith in The New York Times described his work in his 2006 exhibition at Harris Lieberman Gallery in New York as one that “jarringly mashes together performance art, sculpture, and set and costume design while alluding to Greek drama, science fiction, monster-movie special effects, and Isadora Duncan.” He was included in the Uncertain States of America exhibition which traveled to Oslo, Peking, and Berlin. He has taught at Bezalel and Sarah Lawrence College.
Mika Rottenberg—Visual Arts 2004
mikarottenberg@gmail.com
Mika Rottenberg makes video installations that revivify feminist subject matter with her black humor. New York Magazine and Interview Magazine recently voted her one of 10 artists to watch, and in the past year she has exhibited at the Tate, the Moscow Biennale, the Herzliya Biennale, and the Serpentine Gallery. She attended Beit Berl College and School of Visual Arts and is represented by Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in New York.
Miki Carmi—Visual Arts 2005
mikicarmi@yahoo.com
Miki Carmi grew up in Jerusalem and has been painting since he was five. In 1998, he entered the Bezalel Academy and in 2001 spent a year in Holland at the Royal Academy in The Hague. Miki’s powerful oil paintings depict family members and close friends as large heads without hair or background and focus the viewer’s attention on the physicality of the paint. He has received numerous awards including the Brevoort Eickemeyer Grant and the America Israel Cultural Foundation’s Sharett Scholarship. He showed at the Anne de Villepois Gallery in Paris this year and is represented in New York by Stux Gallery
Yoav Horesh—Visual Arts 2005
yoav@yoavhoresh.com
Yoav Horesh’s large format black and white photographs explore the sites of suicide bombings in Israel after the government has repaired them. He assisted a number of notable photographers including Steve Pyke and Richard Avedon. Since graduating from our program, he has been teaching at the Massachusetts College of Art where he received his B.F.A. His photographs have been shown at Nathan A. Bernstein & Co. in New York.
Daniel Bauer—Visual Arts 2006
djb2111@columbia.edu
Daniel Bauer shoots large format photographs and often uses digital techniques to increase the scale of vision and monumentalism of his subjects, which range from sublime landscapes to mattresses. He studied photography at the Bezalel Academy and the Columbia University School of the Arts as well as history and political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His work has been exhibited in Berlin and New York, as well as Austria, Israel, Italy, Japan, and Sweden. He participated in the 1999 International Biennale of Contemporary Art, Jerusalem and the 2002 Venice Biennale of Architecture. In 2004, he was awarded the Gerard Levy Prize by the Israel Museum. He is represented by Andrea Meislin Gallery in
New York.
Tamy Ben-Tor—Visual Arts 2006
tamybentor@hotmail.com
Tamy Ben-Tor is a video and performance artist. The holocaust and its denial are frequent themes of her performances. In the Village Voice, Jerry Saltz explained how “the Holocaust is alive in Ben-Tor's raw, awkward, cutting work. It isn't confined to a set of academic gestures or hackneyed responses.” A review of her 2005 show at Zach Feuer Gallery by Ken Johnson in The New York Times noted “her chameleonesque ability to transform herself into hilarious characters” in order to touch on more serious topics. She was also Slate.com’s artist of the month in December 2005 and her performance Judensau was presented last month at Performa 07.
Uri Aran—Visual Arts 2007
ula2101@columbia.edu
Uri Aran is primarily a sculptor and video artist, but he also makes drawings and paintings. Moti Hasson Gallery described him as “a filmmaker who breaks video apart into its structural elements: sound, pace, edit, and action, disrupting the way story and meaning is developed.” His work is currently on display at GBE/Passerby in a show presented by the MOMA Department of Architecture and Design.
Oz Malul—Visual Arts 2008
om2149@columbia.edu
Oz Malul works primarily as a kinetic sculptor, but also with video. Oz’s work comes from a rigorous admixture of absurdist humor and a painful existential anguish that would make the great Samuel Beckett proud. Ordinary and commonplace materials and objects are made strange in Oz’s artwork, sometimes by a small alteration to them, sometimes by elaborate and highly technical mechanical devices that Oz constructs specifically for this purpose. This past summer he had a one person show at Dvir Gallery in Israel.
Einat Amir—Visual Arts 2009
ea2318@columbia.edu
Einat Amir works primarily in video. She is a passionate artist who engages with some of the most difficult political questions of our day regarding sexuality and postcolonialism. Despite the seriousness of these questions, her work often displays a humorous methodology, the better to encourage our rethinking. Professor Yair Garbuz of Beit Berl College described her as one of Beit Berl’s most outstanding, unique, and intriguing students. Einat was also invited to join the editorial staff of the prestigious art periodical Hamidrasha.
Gilad Ratman—Visual Arts 2009
gr2274@columbia.edu
Gilad Ratman works primarily in video. Gilad has developed a highly idiosyncratic video language, one that is structured around a poetic logic rather than a rational one, and replete with surprising enigmatic wonders, while somehow evoking the feeling of cinema rather than video art. He received the Outstanding Achievements Award from Bezalel Academy in 2001 and has already cemented his reputation in the art world in Israel. Sergio Edelsztein, Director of the Center for Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv describes Gilad as one of the most talented and brilliant artists he has worked with.
Rona Yefman—Visual Arts 2009
rv2169@columbia.edu
Rona Yefman works in photography and video. Her work employs various photographic fictions, masks, costumes, and actors to produce staged images that give us access to the deep structures of truth in our societies. Guy Ben-Ner made the following observation in his letter of support for Rona: “The courage and humanity arising from works such as this are, in my view, evidence of a truly unique artist who manages (how rare is that) to talk to us about the most private aspects of our/her life by means of play, acting, and masks. Masks that conceal the faces behind them but reveal their souls.” Her film 2 Flags is currently on view at Smackmellon in Brooklyn.
Click here to view photos from the event.
More about Yaron Leshem
More about Leshem Loft
Click here to read about the event on Heart As Arena.
Click here to read an article about the event in Yediot Achronot.