Two artists have a change of perspective

 

Artists Erez Israeli and Norbert Bisky swapped their studios in Tel Aviv and Berlin for a few months.

 

Erez Israeli fastens a golden cigarette lighter to the image of the burning schtetl. The artist from Tel Aviv recently found the lighter at a Berlin flea market. It is engraved with the inscription: 1943. In Liebe. Dein Hans (With love, Hans). When he picked it up, he thought of the fire that devoured Jewish shops and synagogues. He thought that someone can feel the fire of love and at the same time set light to a shop.

The picture of the burning schtetl, in the foreground of which he has painted a couple in traditional Bavarian clothing with a dog, its leg raised, will be on show until 21 April in Berlin. At Checkpoint Charlie Galerie Crone is showing Israeli’s exhibition “The Difference Between OOOOH and AAAAH”.

 

Their studio in a disused factory in Berlin’s Friedrichshain district is huge. It is bright and warm. The noise from the trams that thunder along the street of shops does not reach the second rear courtyard. Spring sunshine floods through the windowpanes. This is actually where painter Norbert Bisky works, one of the best-known contemporary German artists. Erez Israeli has swapped his studio in Tel Aviv with that belonging to the Berliner for several weeks.

It was Friederike Schir, initiator of a German-Israeli cultural exchange (www.schir.net) who inspired the idea of the studio swap. At Schir’s suggestion, Markus Peichl from Galerie Crone and gallerist Nomi Givon from Tel Aviv met in 2014 in Tel Aviv. They decided to approach two artists of the same generation about a studio swap and settled on Norbert Bisky and Erez Israeli, who met a number of years ago. The pair agreed, Bisky flew to Tel Aviv on 1 January, Israeli flew to Berlin on 15 January. Norbert Bisky is showing his works produced in Tel Aviv parallel to Israeli, likewise in Berlin. His exhibition “Balagan” will be on show until 30 August at the former Bötzow Brewery. Then, in 2016, Givon Art Gallery in Tel Aviv will be showing works by both artists.

 

When Erez Israeli takes the tram back to his studio in Friedrichshain and the last stop, Warschauer Strasse, is announced with the words “This train terminates here”, Israeli thinks of Auschwitz. “Why don’t they say: ‘The last station’? Or: ‘End of the line’? ‘Terminate’ means that nothing comes after, the absolute end.” He also thinks of Auschwitz when he hears the announcement on the train of which side passengers must exit on at the next stop, left or right. It is like the concentration camp, where people were sorted right behind the train. Right or left. Live or die. Erez Israeli only thinks these things in Berlin. “The past is the present”, he says.

For an artist born in 1974, such an intensive confrontation with the Holocaust is perhaps unusual. “But it is highly topical,” says Israeli, “if we look at what has happened in recent years in Israel and Europe. I am not just talking about the attacks on Jews. I am also talking about the large group of people who gather on Mondays in German cities and call for Muslims to leave the country. And I am talking about the enmity between Muslims and Jews.” 

 

It is the stereotypes, the clichés, that the artist vehemently addresses. Oversized noses protrude from his pictures, along with corresponding penises, in a nod to the cliché of the link between the length of both. Israeli collects toys from flea markets: a metal train set with Nazi symbols, wooden figures from fairy tales like those that used to hang in children’s bedrooms, jumping jacks. Jumping jacks of all sizes and from various decades. Israeli mutilated some of them, tearing off half a leg or an arm. For Israeli the reduced, rigid puppets that only move when someone pulls the strings have come to symbolize fascism. They jump around merrily on gloomy canvases, their darkness suggesting something terrible.

“Our lives are full of clichés,” says Israeli. “You can try to ignore them or address them. Israeli life is full of clichés too. You try to create a collective memory for people from all parts of the world and seek an expression that everyone can follow. In the evening of the day of remembrance for fallen soldiers there is a festive ritual in Jerusalem celebrating Israel’s independence. You can physically feel this transition from grief to joy. Young people don’t want to hear about the Holocaust anymore. When I started focussing on the Holocaust I made a video in which I sewed a yellow star onto my body. “In Israel many people found this work provocative. They thought that a young man like me would have no idea what it was like to wear the yellow star. “But what do they know about me?” says Israeli. “My mother also lost her parents when she was young. The past and the pain are also mine, for I am Israeli.” Yet the artist’s pain, whose ancestors came from Romania and Hungary, is a different one. It is the pain stemming from that which personal conversation should keep alive stiffening in clichés.

The first piece he produced in Berlin hangs between two windows. It is a large eye with three teardrops falling from it. Each of the teardrops is a pair of the oval pliers sculptors use to measure their works. Israeli bought them at an artists’ shop, thinking about the measuring clamps that race researchers used to measure different skulls in the Nazi era, deriving their theory of subhumans and superhumans from their findings. Thoughts that only obtrude on him in Berlin.

    

Erez Israeli

The Difference Between OOOOH and AAAAH

Galerie Crone

Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse 26, Berlin

Runs until 21 April 2015

Opening hours: Tues – Sat from 11 a.m. – 6 p.m.

    

Norbert Bisky

Balagan

Bötzow Berlin

Prenzlauer Allee 242, Berlin

Runs until 30 August 2015

Opening hours: Thurs – Sat 3 – 8 p.m., Sun 2–6 p.m.