Oh, Land
A two-person exhibition:
Bila Berg and Klil Wexler
Curator: Nurit Tal-Tenne
01 March 2024 - 30 March 2024
Oh, Land
A two-person exhibition by Bila Berg and Klil Wexler
Curator: Nurit Tal-Tenne
The two-person exhibition Oh Land, is an intergenerational duet between artists Bila Berg and Klil Wexler. In the exhibition, Berg and Wexler (mother and daughter) address, each through a different medium, the fracture inherent in the earth as both land and home, from individual and national points of view. They address long and short-term memory and the attempts to preserve in the material.
On its walls, the exhibition houses Berg’s paintings, a series of works in oil and tar on canvas (2018-24) which treat the landscape’s fracture and crumbling. The physical rift, which serves as an allegory for the social and political rift, is the product of human behavior resulting in loss, destruction, and annihilation. Berg’s pictorial surface builds up slowly and continuously: the light, form, and color are part of an intentional process of applying layers of paint, exposing, and concealing, from which the material’s natural essence emerges. Between the layers, sudden cracks are generated in the material, which alter the surface and the reality.
Wexler’s changing installation stands in the center of the gallery space. A chandelier made of melted sugar and ready made hangs from the ceiling and below it a hole gapes open in the floor. These bring to the fore an intimate familial memory of grandmother’s home, of its inherent manifest and latent pain and rupture. The chandelier, the weathered floor, and the collection of vases represent the grandmother’s home and underline the encounter between European heritage and grandeur and the provincial home in Ashkelon and the loss and grief that encompassed it. The installation echoes the home’s presence while at the same time eliciting a sense of its potential collapse.
The installation, made of biodegradable materials (sugar, tar), is expected to change form throughout the exhibition. The sugar object, which serves as a support for a charcoal drawing, slowly drips, breaks, and its physical state changes like memory itself: blurs, forgets, and fades with the movement of passing time.
The exhibition, which connects generations, expresses the ongoing cycle of destruction, while the connection between the various mediums intensifies physical and emotional observation. It provides a glance at the collapse of land and home, like an air-raid siren warning about the future, a last moment of light before nightfall, before complete darkness takes control.
About the artists and the curator
Klil Wexler is a multidisciplinary artist who works in installation, sculpture, drawing and painting. Her works respond to traumas, injustices, and rifts she identifies in society and in her close surroundings. They incorporate autobiographical materials, real-life places, and historical events which weave together into a single imaginary space where they confront each other. Wexler holds a BFA (honors) from the Department of Fine Arts at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, and is currently pursuing an MFA at Bezalel. She has presented solo shows at the Water Tower Gallery in Tivon, the Refrigerator Gallery in Tel Aviv, and the Jerusalem Artists' House. In addition, Wexler has participated in exhibitions at the Museum on the Seam, the Givat Haviva Art Gallery, the Artists’ Studios Jerusalem and more. At present, she works out of a studio at the New Gallery Artists’ Studios - Teddy Stadium. She completed the “Incubator” program of the Artists’ Studios in Talpiot. She has been awarded grants by the Independent Creators' Fund, the America-Israel Cultural Foundation and the Jerusalem Municipality.
Bila Berg lives and works in Moshav Kfar Bin Nun. She has presented solo exhibitions at the Monsila Gallery and Call in Barcelona, the Tel Aviv Artists’ House, the Nora Gallery in Jerusalem and more. She has also participated in exhibitions at the Hanita Museum, the Tel Aviv Artists Studios, the Apter Gallery in Maalot, the Hatahana Gallery in Tel Aviv, the Oasis Art Gallery at Neve Shalom and more. In 2017, her painting was selected as one of the ten best paintings exhibited that year in Barcelona. She paints fragments of landscapes, decomposes them and reconstructs them.
Nurit Tal-Tenne is an independent curator and lecturer. She holds an MA from Tel Aviv University’s Department of Art History. Over the past two decades, Tal-Tenne has curated dozens of solo and group exhibitions, collaborating with prominent artists such as Elie Shamir, Adi Ness, and Alex Libak. Using an eclectic approach, she curates diverse research-based exhibitions in various exhibition spaces. They incorporate a range of disciplines and are linked to social issues (rape and sexual violence, victims of terrorism, postpartum depression and more), some with an “artist-curator” agenda. Tal-Tenne has authored numerous articles and catalogs. In 2019, her book, “The Big Bear - Talks about Postpartum Depression” was published by Pardes. In 2022, she was appointed Chair of the Committee of Judges for the Young Artist prize of the ministries of education and culture.
Bein Hashmashot: Between Night and Day;
End – Edge – Addendum.
Oh, Land is the fifth exhibition of the 2023-2014 exhibition season, presented on the subject of the trilogy Bein Hashmashot: Between Night and Day; End – Edge – Addendum. Today’s times are characterized by a sense of urgency which can lead to one-dimensionality, yet also invites a complex, “multi-focal” analysis. One cannot discuss the present without considering the past and building the future.
End: There is a sense that the imminent end is lingering in the air, boundaries have been crossed, the world order has been upended, and doubt has now been cast on assumptions that were once axioms. That which was once taken for granted is no longer certain. What is good and what is bad? How can one distinguish between the two? The word “end” signifies the finishing part, the point where the thing ceases to exist.
Threshold: The threshold is a gate, an opening one must pass through in the struggle to restore meaning, decorum, and standards. In order to recover, one must consent to sojourn in threshold spaces, in destruction and uncertainty. One must agree to touch upon loss, compromise, and change. One must push up against the edges and taste the ashes.
Addendum: Lingering within a sense of destruction, anxiety, and horror enables, in the end, hope to sprout. From wallowing in the depths, the cracked and broken areas, and from disease, separation, loss, and collapsed systems, a seed sprouts, breathing new life into the consciousness and the body and helping to identify the strength embodied within them.