Upcoming Exhibitions Update: February /March/ April /May, 2011
Clinton, South Carolina, USA Elizabeth Stone Harper Gallery January 20 - 25th - Exhibition on the theme of "A BOOK ABOUT DEATH LIFE" collective exhibition
Tel Aviv, Israel Bank Hapoalim - February 18th Exhibition on "Imagination AIDS Benefit" collective exhibition
Berlin, Germany Prima Center February 25th March 24th Exhibition on ARCHETYPOLOGY " Video screening at the opening: "Seeking Kali" project" collective exhibition
New York, NY, USA - Agora Gallery - March 25th April 15th-Exhibition on the theme of "Six Degrees of Abstraction" collective exhibition
Tel Aviv, Israel - Hanger Yaffo Port - April 5th, 2011- Fresh Paint 4 Exhibition on the project of "Secret Postcard" collective exhibition
Treviso, Italy - Centrale Libreria Costaneiro Galleria Piazza April 22 May- Exhibition on the theme of " A BOOK ABOUT DEATH Ommaggio a Ray Johnson " collective exhibition
Holon, Israel The Arts music Center Steinberg Gallery April 27- May- Exhibition on the theme of "Holon 70 years" - collective exhibition
Treviso, Italy De Marchi Gallery May 9th -21 Exhibition on the theme of "Little Treasures" collective exhibition
Phoenix, AZ, USA Willo North Gallery - May 3 -May 28th -Exhibition on the theme of "A BOOK ABOUT DEATH ~ memento" collective exhibition
Berlin, Germany ECC- European Creative City May 6th June 5th Exhibition on the theme of "Matkot" collective exhibition
Upcoming Exhibition
March 25th - April 15th
New York, NY, USA
Agora Gallery
"Six Degrees of Abstraction"
Exhibition Curator: Anat Nitzan, Gallery by the lake - Raanana
And G-d said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. (Genesis 1:3)
How does the artist decipher the secret of creation and the secrets of the various worlds? Is his creativity spiritual or scientific? What are the spiritual and cognitive tools that the artist uses to engender the act of creation? And does the artist's creation of the world resemble or differ from the creation of the world by the physicist or the mystic?
The artist, the physicist and the mystic all attempt to imitate G-d in his act of creation, and this constitutes the main thread interwoven through all of the artistic creations in this exhibition. The artist re-creates the world. The prayer verse 'who each day in his beneficence renews the act of creation' can be extended to include the act of the artist who constantly renews the act of Genesis; the creation of the world.
Is there an internal connection between the Kabbalistic mythology of the formation of the universe from its inception until the present day and the "Big Bang" theory of the formation of the universe? Indeed, numerous highly regarded scholars have made interesting attempts to compare the "Big Bang" theory to Kabbalistic mythology on the creation of the universe, mainly the school of thought associated with the Ari Hakadosh (Rabbi Isaac Luria). Nevertheless, it is important to note that the mystic's toolbox differs from that of the scientist's. The Kabbalist contemplates on the inner light within his own heart and, through it, connects with the light of the divine; hence, he knows, by internal and direct experience, how the universe was created. In this regard, the artist resembles the mystic whose inspiration is drawn from direct experience.
Moreover, like the mystic, the artist works with visual, iconic tools. As opposed to the Talmud which opens a new subject with the phrase "Ta Shema", meaning "come and listen", the Zohar regularly begins a discussion with the phrase "Ta Haze", meaning "come and see". While the Talmud uses arbitrary literary symbolism, the mystic, like the artist, uses visual iconic symbolism. Even the scientist occasionally uses visual imagery as a tool to assist scientific creation and problem-solving, as shown in the Gestalt psychologist Wertheimer's classic study of Einstein's creative processes. The artist, like the Kabbalist and the best of scientists, represents the world as a picture, not necessarily a word.
This exhibition employs a creative visual tool that is commonly found in the Kabbalah- the theoretical construct of the four worlds which form our universe. The four worlds are known in the Kabbalah as ABY"A, the acronym for Atzilut ("the world of emanation"), Beriah ("the world of creation"), Yetzirah ("the world of formation"), and Assiyah ("the world of action"). These worlds express the different levels of the realization of the power of God.
To get some of the flavor of the four worlds concept, let us look at what Rabbi Haim Vital, a follower of the Ari Hakadosh (Rabbi Isaac Luria), writes in his seminal essay "The Tree of Life", second part: "ABY"A in general":
The four worlds are abbreviated as ABY"A: It is necessary to clarify in general all aspects of the four worlds known as ABY"A. And we should also explain the world of emanation. This is the root from which to understand three worlds as ten worlds. Because at first they are the ten spheres of emanation, which existed originally from days of yore until the end of the Nukba (female aspect) merged with Zair Anphin [lit., 'the small face'- 6 lower spheres] of emanation and they are followed by the world of creation in which there are also ten spheres like the example of the ten spheres of emanation. And this is called the world of the seat of honor, meaning that they are below the Nukba of Zair Anphin called honor. And the [world of] creation is the seat beneath it, so that the world of creation is called the seat of honor. And this is followed by the world of formation, and this is also composed of ten spheres. And in this is the world of METATRON, the internal Minister [highest of angels] with ten sets of angels and after them the world of action, and they are ten cycles of the heavens encircling us who are within them, the lower earth.
The power of Jack Cymber's exhibition stems from the fact that Jack strives to recreate the four worlds whilst maintaining an internal dialog with the secrets of the Kabbalah. Several aspects of this exhibition stand out in the comparison with the concept of ABY"A in the Kabbalah namely: Flow, movement and dynamism which are central characteristics in the mystical approach of the book of the Zohar and the Kabbalah of the Ari Hakadosh (Rabbi Isaac Luria); the usage of letters - a core part of the mystical theory of the Sefer Hayetsira (Book of Creation) and that of the Sephardi Kabbalist, Rabbi Avraham Aboulafia; the tension between order and chaos, and between unity and multiplicity - a theme that recurs in different streams of the Kabbalah throughout the generations.
The tension between unity and multiplicity is expressed in different aspects of the works of art and in the internal dialog that takes place between these art works. Many pictures in the exhibition contain four geometrical forms - circles or rectangles - that represent the four worlds, and thus express the multiplicity. It should be noted that multiplicity is illustrated by abstract geometric shapes and not through anthropomorphic shapes. This is in contrast to the Kabbalah of the Ari where worlds are represented through the image of the 'prehistoric man' the archetype figure that represents the structure of the world, through the figure of a man. Here it is apparent that the artist seeks abstraction and geometrical simplicity. If so, the artist grasps the internal fundamental essence of the Kabbalah as a desire for the abstract.
A central motif in Jack's work is the conception of the worlds through the enigmatic power of letter combinations. According to the Kabbalist Rabbi Israel Sarug, the Torah, which was the tool for God's creation, was revealed differently in each of the four worlds: In the world of Emanation, the Torah was merely a sequence of all possible combinations of the alphabet letters. The initial linguistic sequence of letter combinations is the product of the whimsical play of infinity deep within its omnipotence to reveal its strength. Thus, G-d weaved the divine fabric of the Torah as a mantle of letters. In the world of creation the Torah was constructed in the form of holy names out of combinations of the elements that existed in the world of emanation. In the world of formation, the Torah appears in the shape of names of angels and divine forces congruent with the unique regularity of this world. In the world of action, the Torah appears as it is revealed to us.
Jack is influenced by way that the formation of the worlds is conceptualized in the Kabbalah as conforming to the secret power of letter combinations. In one of his paintings, you can even see the revelation of the Torah through the enigmatic power of circles of letters in different ways in each of the four worlds. Not only do these circles of letters signify the worlds ontologically, they also represent the worlds as creative forces through meditative practice, that is to say, states of consciousness representing the passion within the human soul. In other words, observing the image meditatively may alter the observer's state of consciousness.
Note how one of the circles, possibly hinting to the world of emanation, does not contain the entire range of the letter combinations. There is one dimension, according to Jack, that goes beyond letter combinations, beyond language, perhaps suggesting the revelation of the power of infinity that does not appear through letter combinations. In other words, the creation of the world, or the creation of a new state of consciousness, does not necessarily need to be realized or revealed only through the language of letter combinations, but may also appear through abstract geometry like the perfect shape of the circle. Thus, Jack creates his own unique path, in contrast to Rabbi Avraham Aboulafia and Rabbi Israel Sarug, in his attempt to understand the secrets of the creation of the worlds, the formation of the divine language and the creation of divine consciousness in the human soul.
Dr. Avi Elqayam
Head of the Moussaiof Center of Kabbalah Bar Ilan University
Cymber, an artist in the process of exploring those phenomena hovering around the hazy and illusive border that constitutes the essence of "reality," discovers an abstract unity around which he creates his artistic concept. In a unique way, his paintings reflect this abstract unity and illuminate a philosophical connection which parallels his inner connection to the world of Kabbalah.
The inspiration of the world of Kabbalah leads, throught the paintings, to Cymbers personal interpretation of the four worlds: Azilut [Emanation], Briyah [Creation], Yitzirah [Formation], and Asiyah [Doing], seeking spiritual completion through the Ten Sephirot, creating a geometry of circles and levels that are ritual metaphors leading to the higher attributes (Sephirot) in the Kabbalah, reaching upwards towards the Keter [Crown].
For example, in his "Emanation, paintings, Cymber is involved in examining the light emanating towards us in Kabbalistic terms. Emanation is a Platonic term borrowed from the Greeks. The Kabbalists explain emanation using the sun and light as a parable. The sun radiates light that lessens the further away it gets from the source. Just as it is impossible for us to look directly into the light of the sun, so too is divinity impossible to achieve physically. Only reflections are attainable, but they are of a lesser degree of "divinity" than the source. Cymbers paintings test the limits of illumination, reaching upwards towards the source of divine light.
Other paintings relate to the upper world of loving and giving and its connection to the forces of nature, which are described by the Kabbalists in the sentence, "an upside down world I saw."
In this new exhibition, we can recognise how the search for compositions expressing spiritual experiences through perishable materials such as paper, feathers and pieces of wood, which characterized his work in the past, now makes way for an energetic burst in the style of "action paintings," which leave clues to the natural base materials, but where these base materials are elevated to a higher level and reach an abstraction of nature which could be termed abstract automatism.
The art critic Greenberg has described the crammed and compressed nature of the paintings "all overness" embracing an absolute action in which the artist merges with the creation. As such, the works are in the spirit of the action painting school (a school to which artists such as Jackson Pollock and William de Kooning belong). The artist's whole body participates in the splashing and spraying of the paint from the can to the canvas spread on the floor. Such a direct process enables true self expression; a process of completely giving of oneself that expresses the struggle with the colour of the paint and the colourful world itself, while simultaneously controlling the direction of ideas from inner to outer worlds.
Cymber creates images of the expanses of the cosmos, building his interpretation of the universe in a weave of lines and spots which look like dripping fluids collecting into puddles of colour, moving between galaxies, examining the essence of the transition between materialism and spirituality.
Cymbers language is dynamic, intuitive and expressive. The use of biblical fonts and letters, as a significant formal element, add an additional dimension to the cosmic images leading to a bridging of the spiritual and the earthly, through signifier and signified, each element influencing the other and creating unity and harmony.
The use of letters as forces acting on our world forges a connection of meanings which hold within them a hidden prayer for unity, for a process of simultaneous giving and receiving.
Cymbers original techniques produce a rich rainbow of shades. The earth colours, rust, a mix of copper residues in shades of turquoise and brown are produced from acid. The use of mixed technique as background adds another dimension of depth. Cymber makes use of a variety of available materials and rhythmic stain-shapes ("Tachisme shapes"). He spreads layers of fluid paint freely, making use of brush strokes as if asking to eliminate control and supervision and to create a new order. The use of different materials, the readymade, contrasting colours, the coloured areas moving from the dark, symbolising a world of doing and toil, and up into the light, symbolising infinity and emanation, represent an elevation of the spirit over the material.
Cymber is imbued with a humanistic world perspective, aspiring to an aesthetic and moral ideal expressed through his work; a call from the depths to row upstream, against the current to the exalted light.
The works radiate power struggles, a dialect of questions and answers within a dynamic intellectual trance leading to a virtuoso improvisation of abstract shapes. The works carry within them rhythms built of intuition combined with intellect, strength and freedom like the melody of a musical composition.
The artist adds an innovative aspect in the form of the language of Judaism, a fascinating mystical element which asks to imbue the flow of light through contemplation, expressed through an impressive colour palette. The style sweeps the viewers towards a unique vision; we experience an elevation into the expanses of the cosmos, a magical process, from the search, until the discovery, as a totality.
Anat Nitzan Curator of the Exhibition
This series of paintings represents the four worlds or heavens: Atzilut ("the world of emanation"), Beriah ("the world of creation"), Yetzirah ("the world of formation"), and Assiyah ("the world of action") all emerging out of infinite light and culminating in our finite physical universe. A four diptych series is dedicated to each of these worlds.
The inspiration in the first diptych is the world of emanation, the eternal unchanging divine world. On this level - the cosmos- the light of the infinite radiates from, but is yet united with its source of light.
The second diptych relates to the abode of creation. In the first separation from the divine, creation emerges out of pure nothingness. It is considered "Heaven" proper: abstract intelligences, without shape or form. Painting this series felt like traveling by air through the spiritual universes.
The third diptych represents the world of formation which I view as the source of creation, with the element of water as its life source. For the first time, the created being assumes shape and form. Existence takes the form of general archetypes, the abode of men's souls.
The fourth diptych suggests physical action, depicting dream-land views of mother earth, the material universe in which we live, paradisiacal aerial views, in which the micro-cosmos contains the macro-cosmos and vice versa. On this later level, creation is complete, - our physical world with all its creatures.
The "fourfold" motif repeats itself within the series conceptually and visually in various different ways. There are paintings relating to the four worlds by means of the alphabet which is of heavenly origin. This in turn corresponds to the four letters of the Essential Name, Havayah. The round circles and spirals repeat the infinity and worlds theme, not in the plain meaning of circle or sephirot, but in its sense of integral completion.
The heavenly abstract nature of the paintings and the energy of the colors attempt to demonstrate the mystery of creation, as it is written in Proverbs: "God's glory is a hidden thing (25:2)". The art works are spontaneous, inspirational, revealing intense emotional experience that conveys a distinct focus and evokes the imagination. I want to visually and intuitively translate metaphysical concepts into images. To a certain degree, I allowed the art to self-create through a combination of intellectual considerations with which I wanted to work and experiment. The color manifestation and the narratives that go along with the paintings are a visual aid to these various meanings. Just like the lens which captures in a frame an open space, pointing to a continuum of the big picture, so I create working from all sides of the canvas, maintaining an open composition and letting it create itself. As Jackson Pollack said "The painting has a life of its own".
Darkness and Light:
This series deals with the concept of the creation of light which has many ramifications in the Kabbalistic literature. It refers basically to the statement that the creator "forms light and creates darkness, makes peace and creates evil ..."
According to Kabbalah, everything in the world is made up of two parts - that which we see and know, and that which we can't see and don't yet know. The concealed part - the spiritual source, essence and purpose behind every detail of creation - far exceeds the revealed. In our world, what we can't see is perceived as darkness, and what we can see as light. Darkness is a creation for it is an absence of light, the divine force creates it by making a vacuum within light. So in a sense, the light, by concealing the infinity beneath it, is actually darkness, and the darkness, which is too vast to be perceived, is actually light. Divinity has thus divided between light and darkness, because this is a world of mixtures and changes. In this world they are counter-changed, and we pass daily from one to another; that we may learn to expect the vicissitudes in the providence of the creator.
Exhibition Curator: Guy Olami, Tel-Aviv Artists House
Exhibition Curator: Guy Olami Art Gallery at the The Wohl Center - Bar Ilan University
In general, my art is embedded within a philosophical approach to mystical concepts which also encompasses contemporary abstract art movements. What lies behind the façade of everything that pretends to be our existence? What elements do we need to focus on to yield a different picture? What are the parameters of our existence? My visualization of the spiritual virtual world relates through the means of the material world to the thoughts from which it emanates. Art is the only field in which the key is visualization; in essence it is the altruistic action of artists for whom creation is the ultimate goal. Digital technology allows the artist to make virtual what is already virtual by definition. Paraphrasing MIT professor Sherry Turkle,*: people can discover a postmodern way of knowing so that they come to see reality in the virtual way.
One day a digital miss-function of a TV transmission generated a screen visual disruption. To me this digital power disruption by "chance" acted as a filter, or represented a parallel reality, or the intersection of time and space, helping me to visualize this intersection.
The digital imagery reflected unique adjacent cells, fragmented, amazing in their color, at different screen angles, reproducing an abstract image in raster form (Systematic sampling of a grid-pattern of individual pixel-spaces with a view to representing an overall image) as a series of adjacent pixel elements disposed along a plurality of adjacent parallel lines in a combination of powerful aesthetic composition. These were not the images we are used to seeing on our digital TV screen. I felt excited to be present and aware of the moment, the "malfunction" caught on camera when the TV screen in a split second lost its equilibrium, revealing to us its concealed identity, realizing that this was no chance event. The screen of the lower spiritual object revealed part of a higher spiritual object, previously concealed, onto itself; it transcended what is apparently real, or the fictitious worlds which lie in another dimension. The issue of tapping into other frequencies: future, past, present and / or parallel universes works and explores hidden sets of images that slide in the "space-time continuum" that defines our space, the here and now, taking the form of something which is neither real nor ordinary, but somewhere in-between, in an indeterminate state, unclassifiable.
I mounted the light screen images into a box that is the like of a plasma or LCD digital TV screen to help us reflect on the screen before us; where real and virtual intersect- that magic moment where digital technology helps us understand higher concepts. I am enthralled that our existence could be multi-dimensional and the said digital screen or curtain could point to a reproduction of another virtual reality into the inherent force that designs and shapes matter.
* ("Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet")
Promised Eternally:
The installation "Promised Eternally" is an interdisciplinary creation which fuses contemporary Art and Fashion design, material and spiritual, and the relations of Bride - Groom and the Creator.
The essence of the installation is the concept of the pledging oneself to the Omnipotent, and that the ultimate 'rectification-repair' takes place in this state. The Installation is composed of shutters of windows "found objects" creating a box like structure of tefillin that stands as the spiritual groom and the bride's home. From within the box of the tefillin slips the torso of the groom which transforms the person into the bride of G-d (the Groom), over his head levitates the "Talith" as a continuation of the bride's dress, its sleeves are wings and auspices the divine presence. Under the box: the rupture of the seven broken vessels and the seven rectified vessels.
When one takes a strap of leather and writes upon it Torah verses and winds up the tefillin strap around the finger, it is an expression of being bound to G-d, so is the ring on the finger that represents the bond between the bride and groom.
Perforation:
Assessing the visual outcome of material punctured brought me to think of the process of Perforation found in the most commonly found urban object: the toilets, sanitation and sewerage. The actual use of a public toilet in the urban setting combines in its essence Perforation and invisible spaces'.
The idea developed as a consequence of putting together segment by segment of divided square boxes which were originally perforated to contain spectacle lenses. These boxes were assembled forming the like of washroom tiles, the roll of perforated toilet paper as well as the toilet seat, were made of perforated canvas material.
I.SELECTIVE SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
2009, Stanford University, San Francisco, CA, USA
