"More Light"
is the name of the exhibition in Dusseldorf by artists Nechama
Levendel and Nadav Bloch from Ein-Hod, the artists' village
in the Carmel mountains in Israel. The name "More Light"
comes from the works of philosopher and scientist Johan Wolfgang
Goethe, after whom many language study institutes all over the
world are named.
The works shown in the exhibition are an attempt by the artists
to highlight the limitations of communication and the transfer
of messages and meaning from one language to another.
The biblical story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11), which
took place after the great flood, tells us how the sons of Shem
revolted against God by building a tower "with its top
in heaven" to link the material with the ideal. The sons
of Shem thought to use one universal language when building
the tower, and thus to reach another god. Their plot was defeated
by the intervention of God, who "confounded their language
that they may not understand one another's speech". The
vision of unity, with one language and one God, vanished. The
confusion of many languages has since then opened the door to
interpretations, a multitude of concept systems and different
thought patterns
Nechama Levendel
has chosen to concentrate on the texts of Ecclesiastes, one
of the three books written by King Solomon in his old age. The
Book of Ecclesiastes deals with man's life and death processes,
with nature and with the recurrence of both. The book begins
and ends with the statement "vanity of vanities, all is
vanity". Meanings are as temporary as a gust of wind.
Language is very important, and has the power to influence man's
spirit, good and evil, human development and its pace. Jewish
sources claim that the first written letters appeared on the
two tablets of the testimony that Moses presented to the children
of Israel. Modern human language is basically a series of simple
symbols that taken from shapes that are part of our everyday
life and of nature. Since the appearance of the written word,
humans have clung to language and have ascribed attributes to
it. The works use the 3000-year-old Aramaic language, which
was spoken in the Middle East and parts of Asia 1000 years before
Christ, who spoke ancient Hebrew and Aramaic, from which modern
Hebrew has evolved. The texts in Nechama's works appear on a
background of gray. Just as the content of the text seeks and
asks, so is the background color unsure and compromising. The
color of rust symbolizes time - the same words, the same meanings,
then and now. There is repetition of things in nature. To quote
Ecclesiastes, "there is nothing new under the sun".
The earth colors of the rest of the works symbolize our agreement
that in all we do, we are parts of the whole.
Nadav Bloch, in his
works, deconstructs ideas into sentences, sentences into words,
words into letters - Hebrew, Latin and Arabic of the three monotheistic
religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam. By means of an
unrelenting quest, Nadav builds the letters in transparent layers
in three warm colors - brown, red and yellow. At the depth of
the transparent layers the light reveals a chaotic and confused
world, which symbolizes lack of understanding, lack of knowledge
and the inability to weave a universal text that can be acceptable
to all. With time, the process of transparent layers creates
combinations of shades of color, and the similar contours of
the letters give us hope. The interrelationships and the evolving
dialogue between the letters create a dynamics of understanding
the need for compromise.
_______________________________________
Wandering.
"Whether by choice or by force, a tradition of searching
and wandering has developed for the Jewish people. Since ancient
times, the people of
Israel have lived a life of wandering. The consequences
of history found Jews living in small communities scattered around
the world.
Nechama Levendel and Nadav Bloch left their home in Ein Hod eight years ago and began
a journey of wandering around the world. Leaving Israel, a crowded country with issues of water scarcity,
they encountered the endless horizons of Scotland, blessed with lush green pastures. Impressed
and inspired, they began working on an exhibition entitled "Wandering."
After leaving Scotland, Nechama and Nadav went on to Germany. The work Nechama did in Germany
reflects an escape to unknown and open spaces.
The poppies depicted in Nadav's paintings are reminders of the
flowers used to memorialize Europe's fallen soldiers from the
first and second world wars. The painting "Heads Up"
depicts sunflowers standing proudly, in full bloom, in spite
of it all.
Nechama's paintings deal with the search for the basics of life.
She depicts the need for migration in search of water, safe
ground, and a peaceful environment. Nechama's present work looks
to challenge our confidence in our perceptions. We are left
to wonder about the solidity of our assumptions, and encouraged
to question the properties of the elements. Nadav uses letters,
the basic building blocks of formal communication, to depict
chaotic confusion in our understanding. The letters of Hebrew,
Arabic, and Latin origin seem to compete for dominance in a
place where meanings are not clear.
Nechama and Nadav's paintings display a wide range of styles
and represent their way of life."
___________________________________________
Who
can live without it.
Every Nechama
Levendel and Nadav Bloch were born in Israel. They live in the
Israeli artist village of Ein Hod. But they decided to live
to-gether and to travel together viewing the entire world as
their global village, international Ein Hod. "We love to
meet people, societies, we love to learn to enrich our horizons,"
said Nadav Bloch at Jerusalem Broadway, the kosher Manhattan
restaurant.
They just
returned from a visit to Mexico. Their new horizons mean more
creative art work. They had many exhibitions together. They
tend to develop, together, an idea, a concept and then go to
work. Recently, they were approached in Haifa by the director
of the Museum of the history of the pre-1948 illegal immigration
to Palestine. It was illegal because of the British anti-Jewish
policies as the mandatory power. It should be noted that from
May 1939 to June 1949, Britain closed the gates of Palestine
almost hermetically so that the refugees would not move to Palestine.
It was their pro-Arab policy. In Hebrew we define the illegal
immigrants as Maapilim.
This Museum
in Haifa is also the Navy History Museum. The director told
Nechama and Nadav that he plans to launch an exhibition to commemorate
the 'Dakar Affair.' Dakar was an Israeli submarine which disappeared
suddenly in January 1968. It was one of Israel's most well known
national tragedies. Dakar has been an integral part of Israel's
collective memory. But only on May 28, 1999, after 31 years
of non-stop searching, Dakar was discovered near Crete Island,
360 km from Haifa, in the deepest point of the Mediterranean
Sea. (Dakar origi-nally was an old British submarine named Totem).
69 Israelis died in Dakar, a national disaster.
The Museum
plans the exhibition but the idea, the essence of it, is the
brainchild of Nechama and Nadav: "We decided to use the
anchor as the symbol of this tragedy. We conducted, first of
all, deep research of the role of the anchor in history. We
traveled to many placed and countries looking for anchors, new
ones as well as ancient ones. The anchor has a meaning: 'The
right to anchor.' We, the Jews, had linkage to the anchor, the
right to anchor. Why? Because we are the wandering Jew. We were,
always, people on the move, from country to country, from continent
to continent. So the anchor symbolizes our history," explained
Nadav Bloch who, today, is the 'wandering Israeli': "…Abraham's
family anchored in the Holy Land," said Bloch. Our history
links to the will of anchoring or to the experience of lifting
the anchors. Artists Nechama and Nadav documented the world
of anchors and the 'right to anchor.' Then they decided to base
their Dakar exhibition on 69 pictures of anchors. Each anchor
represents one of the 69 Israeli heroes who are still buried
inside the sea. They died for the right of Israel to have the
right to anchor. Nechama and Nadav exhibited their works from
1995 in Israel, Germany, and Scotland.
