German-Israeli art experience in Bochum

 

An exhibition at Kunstmuseum Bochum presents works by Olaf Holzapfel and Nahum Tevet and concerns itself with the ideas of Israeli pedagogue Malka Haas. A conversation with the curators: Hans Günter Golinski and Galia Bar-Or.

 

A central reference point in “The Rough Law of Gardens”, the exhibition you have curated, is the concept of “junkyards” developed by Israeli kindergarten pedagogue Malka Haas. Could you briefly explain who Malka Haas is and what “junkyards” involve?

Galia Bar-Or: Malka Haas was born in Berlin in 1920. In 1935 she migrated to Israel and was among the founders of Kibbutz Sde-Eliyahu in the Beit She’an Valley. In 1942 she established the first kindergarten in Sde-Eliyahu, which was designed by her specifically to take account of the climate conditions and the children’s needs. Because living conditions in the Beit She’an Valley are hard, due to the scorching heat 200 meters below sea level. The “junkyard”, as she called it, is a continuous open space containing recycled materials and surfaces suitable for building portable structures on. It is a place for a dynamic process of construction and creation where the children learn to develop an independent personality while discovering their abilities and exercising their imagination. The idea was taken up by other kibbutzim, and “junkyards” characterise the surroundings of their children’s houses.

Hans Günter Golinski: You can best imagine it like this: You have some old used lamps or electrical appliances you no longer need, all the sort of stuff that accumulates in a home and can be thrown away. And under careful guidance the children start handling these items and playing with them, but use the things quite differently to the way the objects are intended to be used. Customary everyday objects spark the children’s imagination and fuel their creativity. It’s an exciting phenomenon for us as art historians because here creativity is generated in a completely different way. Art history has examples of everyday objects being used. Marcel Duchamps worked with readymades, Pablo Picasso used everyday items for his assemblages, the Surrealists declared particular objects to be art as objets trouvé. It is all the more exciting to see how something similar played a role in teaching.

“Like field research”

The eponymous video piece by German artist Olaf Holzapfel refers quite explicitly to Haas and her “junkyards”. So how did he come across the topic? How would you describe the piece: Is it an homage or an artistic undertaking in its own right? 

Bar-Or: Olaf Holzapfel was invited to Israel by Loushy Art & Projects from Tel Aviv. And while visiting me in Ein Harod he crossed the “junkyards” and was impressed by the kindergarten landscape. His film deals with the process of reassessing and re-inventing that occurs in the junkyard.

Golinski: Olaf Holzapfel is someone who is interested in essential structures, which he absorbs as an artist and advances. He’s like a field researcher who is forever on an artistic voyage of discovery. And when he arrived in Israel and Galia Bar-Or introduced him to life in the kibbutz what interested him was: What are the social structures, where are the areas of creativity? And of course he was fascinated by the fact that children are offered such fields by confronting them with "garbage", if I may put it that way. He travelled round various kibbutzim including the one in which Malka Haas lives, and very poignantly captured how the children behave in the “junkyards”: How they move, how they build and develop things together. Naturally, at a second level that’s an appreciation of the teaching method. But don’t expect some classical documentary.

So how does Israeli artist Nahum Tevet’s installations fit in?

Golinski: Nahum Tevet grew up with this kind of pedagogics. And if one considers his abstract wooden pieces, some of which remind one of chairs, tables or a boat, with a knowledge of Haas’s concept, then you suddenly find yourself reminded of the orderly disorder to be encountered in a “junkyard”.

Galia Bar-Or: Nahum Tevet was born in the Kibbutz, grew up in the Kibbutz, worked several years in the Kibbutz as an artist and has always kept his ties to the Kibbutz. From the very start of his work in the early 1970s he dealt with simple found objects which he collected in the Kibbutz near his studio. It inspired him to articulate his "object-paintings" which may be interpreted as the constituent element of his entire oeuvre: non-linear installations that deal with bodily experience, fluidity and the ambiguous sense of memory.

“Cross-generational artistic dialogue”

The exhibition is a German-Israeli cooperation in terms of both the artists and the curators. How did that come about?

Bar-Or: It was the idea of Loushi Art to link Tevet and Holzapfel together. Later, when Holtzapfel decided at Ein Harod to focus on the theme of the “junkyard”, it became apparent that their engagement as artists creates a fascinating cross-generational artistic dialogue.

And how did Kunstmuseum Bochum get involved?

Golinski: Galia Bar-Or and I are in very close contact. A few years ago we concluded a kind of friendship agreement between our museums and have already done several projects together. We sat down together and wondered what could be a project that would just as much of interest in Germany as it would be in Israel? Once that was decided, we gradually developed the concept together with the artists.

You yourselves say the exhibition is intended to initiate a dialogue: between two artists, but also between two countries and two generations. Do you feel art is an especially suitable vehicle for this?

Golinski: Most definitely. Art enable communication that cuts across many areas that tend to not be sufficiently expressed in normal verbal communication. Art argues with strongly visual means and creates opportunities to touch the emotional senses. Art expands our perception. And art of course provokes. Art can also address certain themes, taboos, in a quite different way. As a result you can transport and transform much precisely between two countries, between two societies, that would not be readily possible using other means.

Bar-Or: Indeed we both feel that we share the same sense of responsibility towards the past, we both share also a view that art in its own unique ways is capable of confronting  – explicitly and implicitly – a complex past, and what is no less important, of confronting the challenges of a constantly changing environment. 

       

       

Hans Günter Golinski is Director of Kunstmuseum Bochum, Galia Bar-Or is head of the Museum of Art in Ein Harod. The exhibition “The Rough Law Of Gardens” runs from 23 August to 25 October 2015 in Bochum. Parallel to it, on 10 October there will be a show with other pieces by Olaf Holzapfel and Nahum Tevet at the Museum of Art in Ein Harod.