Jerome Zodo Contemporary is pleased to present TALL MOUNTAINS. BLACK LEAVES, the frst
solo exhibition in Italy by Israeli artist Eliezer Sonnenschein (1967, Haifa, Israel), opening
Thursday, March 24, at 6:00 PM in the gallery space at Via Lambro 7, Milan.
Considered to be one of the most important artists on the Israeli scene, Eliezer Sonnenschein
follows a vein of obsessive individualism that gives a diferent, unorthodox, almost anachronistic
feeling to each of his shows. For this occasion, he will be presenting a new series of works within an
exhibition that is like a symbolic path guiding us to identify and refect on the speculative tendency,
both historical and technological, of human experience.
Eliezer Sonnenschein: And so... Do I think it’s right? Wrong? I don’t know. I see myself as an artist
who tries to document our (my) present in the only language I know.
TALL MOUNTAINS. BLACK LEAVES marks the culmination of his latest creative phase, centered
on the psycho-somatic investigation of the virtual world. The exhibition operates on various levels
and through various means of expression, ranging from modular installations, to paintings, by way
of digital photomontages. It is a jarring aesthetic exploration that ventures into delirium and
infection, elements that are distant yet inseparable, a dialectic between surface and visual
language, many diferent components for a single reason, religion. His own? As entities introduced
into the gallery space, they interact, create a dialogue that is a stream of counterpoints: logic,
geometry, and then the heart, the fesh, now the rational language rather than the free
imagination, and vice versa. Vivid bodies are animated by relational complexities, with a nakedness
that is explicit, as in the photographic series of metamorphic self-portraits Only the Elephant Wears
Underwear which express the intention and the pene-trating personality of Eliezer Sonnenschein.
The artist’s practice is impossible to unravel; it forms a fabric of interwoven parts, held together in
the attempt to grasp the multiplicity of their appearance and existence, inevitable refections of
chaotic human activity. Ours? Mine? Yours? His?
DO WE NO LONGER WIN BECAUSE WE HAVE LOST OUR ETERNAL NOTION OF ACHIEVEMENT?
TALL MOUNTAINS. Tall mountains are the imperative that Eliezer Sonnenschein takes as his
starting point; in the history of civilization, they have always been places of the spirit, places for
honing strength and wisdom; the seat of the soul, closer to the presence of God. In the collective
imagination, they have come to symbolize a training ground where man, at the cost of much efort
and sacrifce, learns to tame his own nature, where he cultivates virtue, and step by step, attains
ever-higher levels of equilibrium, wisdom, and inner strength. They do not exist for themselves, but
in relation to the man who contemplates them, challenges them, climbs them, and adapts to them.
(Ascensioni Umane, Giuseppe Langella). The technological era—the web era, the Facebook era—has
defnitively replaced the ideal of conquest with a philosophy of science, which is elevated to
represent total revelation, the autonomy of the human race.
The deep grey structural triptych Snake and Prostitution (2011, wood and mixed media) placed at
the center of the gallery space, incarnates this sense of eversion in media identities, this idea of a
message in movement, like a prostitute moving from body to body; the snake is her garment. The
linear triad is devoid of any specifc function, as is often true of previous works, which cannot be
immediately grasped. Eliezer Sonnenschein simply plays a diferent way of portraying the human
condition.
Eliezer Sonnenschein: … We no longer have privacy, even in what we consider as our Psychological
analysis. In a mater of seconds, mega web powers can know all about the individual personality!
The Facebook Portraits (2011) divided into three large oil canvas and two tables, are based on the
classifcation of diferent personalities: each color— red, black, green, yellow, light blue, orange,
pink — corresponds to a type of behavior on the web. Eliezer Sonnenschein traces out webchromatic
diagrams to classify the diferent personalities of the individuals. What color is given to
someone who tags or posts a picture of his wife’s butt? The same one as Sarah or Simon in the
works Casting for Venus of Willendorf Ass (2011)? And the person who looks at it? And who posts “I
like it”?
A REALLY WELL-MADE BUTT IS THE ONLY LINK BETWEEN ART AND NATURE (O.Wilde)
Eliezer Sonnenschein: The black leaves symbolize our memory: it is real, it is alive, and it no longer
even needs sunlight to perform photosynthesis. It can practically live forever…
BLACK LEAVES. The black leaves represent the relics of our past, the sieve and stage of memory,
the legacy of a history. The term photosynthesis (from the Greek öþôï- [photo-], "light", and
óýíèåóéò [synthesis], "putting together, composition") means properly light assembly; This
explains and anticipates the structural piece High Mountains: Black Leaves (2011) translated as a
kind of hook for refrigerator boxes.
The three-dimensional empyrean sphere of Eliezer Sonnenschein’s work is based on existentialist
poetics which reduce shapes and colors to their most basic essence. In Ventilators (2011), a
mechanical group of white and grey wind turbines made of metal, placed under the gallery’s
mezzanine and very close to the foor, once again embody both the spread of technology as an
expression of our present, and the need for reprieve from it. The artist refreshes our capacity to
feel, he wants us outside of the means, yet works with the means; it is pure contradiction.
Distinguishing himself is thus the existentialist antithesis of our practice and of his Art.
WHAT IS A PAIR OF CHERRIES DOING ON A PENIS?
Whereas the spatial structures involve an exaggerated condensation, the act of painting takes the
opposite; the large Untitled series (2011, oil on cardboard), suggests the violence of flth, of vomit,
of chaotic execution. The entire installation of paintings is a bleak landscape of apocalyptic dark
and nebulous presences. This desolate geography inevitably, echoes scenes from the Middle East,
the artist’s homeland. While the hues in the large Facebook Portraits are the garments of web
users, the color in this family of small works is the human complexion, the skin, its blood, pure
essence of life. The tableaux vivants of Eliezer Sonnenschein convey the sacrifce and the
sentence of the living, a spectral dance that portrays uneasiness as a dynamic, destructive shape
of human life.
Eliezer Sonnenschein was born Haifa in 1967. Lives and works in Rosh-Pina. In recent years he has received several
awards including the prize of Krinzinger Projekte, Wien (2010) and from the Israeli Ministry of Culture (2009).
ES has exhibited in numerous international art events: Plateau of Human Kind, 49th Biennial of Venice, curated by Harald
Szeeman, Venice (2001); Contest, 7th Biennial of Havana, Cuba (2000).
Among his solo shows: Meaningless Humanity Energy Structures, Krinzinger Projekte, Wien (2010); New Works, Natalie
Obadia Gallery, Paris (2006); Three Paintings, One Installation, One Gun, Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel-Aviv (2005).
Among his group shows: Inside Out, Museum Mar- co, Vigo, Spagna (2006); Japan is Here, The Israel Museum, Gerusalemme (2006);
The New Hebrews, Martin Gropius Bau Museum, Berlino (2005); Chan- nel Zero, Netherlans Media Art Institute, Amsterdam (2004);
Haifa Second International Installation Trienna- le, Haifa (2003); Port, Tel-Aviv Museum of Art, Tel-Aviv (2002); Gallery Swap, Sadie
Coles hQ, Londra (2002); [un]gemalt, Essl Museum, Vienna (2002); Baby Demo Test Space, Herzliya Museum of Art, Herzliya (1999).
Among the not authorized shows: 90 Years of Israeli Art - The Phoenix collection, Tel-Aviv Museum of Art, Tel-Aviv (1998); Virtual
Reality, Tel-Aviv Museum of Art - First infltrated work to become ofcial (1996); Anxiety, Museum of Israeli Art, Ramat Gan (1994);
90-70-90, Tel-Aviv Museum of Art (1994); Bograshov - Street- Project, Tel-Aviv (1994).
Eliezer Sonnenschein
Tall Mountains. Black Leaves.
24 March – 21 May 2011
Milan, Jerome Zodo Contemporary (Via Lambro, 7 at the corner of Via Melzo)
Opening hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 10 AM to 7 PM, closed Sundays and Mondays.
Free admission
For more information: phone +39 02.20241935; fax +39 02.20244861; [email protected]
Website: www.jerome-zodo.com
Press Ofce:Studio Pesci, Via San Vitale, 27 - Bologna T. +39051269267 F. +390512960748 - [email protected]
