The Path to Glory

Group exhibition

Saturday, 18.02.17, 20:00

Sunday, 15.10.17

Curator: Svetlana Reingold

 

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The German-born Jewish-American theorist Hannah Arendt, in her discussion of the celebrity phenomenon, referred to the public realm as a “space of visibility,” arguing that in this space, admiration becomes “something that should be used and consumed.” The admiration of the crowds and the celebrity phenomenon are therefore the direct consequences of the visibility culture, while human subjects act in the public realm as performers seeking fame and publicity.

Publicity as something to aspire to per se has become an "empty signifier." The new desire, for one's face to become familiar, fuels powerful systems: television shows, newspapers, public relations campaigns, and advertisement agencies. A range of new psychological problems emerges where the stardust scattered by the aura of publicity meets the complexity of everyday life. The extreme popularity of the Big Brother television show, for instance, reflects the craving for fame, for an existence that is greater-than-life. Many people of all ages, not only the young, struggle for the right to participate in such shows, where they can trade their privacy for fame.

This exhibition focuses on the modern celebrity phenomenon, with its ultimate sacrifice of the private, individual life, in which all means are recruited in order to satisfy the thirst for recognition, for a ride – as short as it may be – on the dazzling carousel of fame. Many of the exhibition's works reflect how "celebrity" is addressed as a concept, and explore the mechanisms of eternal replication that etch the faces of strangers in our memory. These works, characterized by an aesthetics of reproduction, refer to the media world, in which "everything exists only because it is an image," and in which "being is exactly the same as being reproduced."

It seems that the shining, artificial photograph produces the kind of visibility required for today's world. Nowadays photography paves the way to fame. When certain faces start appearing in the public space, it is most likely the responsibility of the camera. The works in the exhibition raise questions regarding self-representation, switching identities, and posing for the camera.

In this context, the French theorist Roland Barthes argued that the presence of the camera plays a uniquely formative role in the subject's and photographer's approach; both sides adapt themselves to the photographic circumstances and to the expectations they impose upon the performers. Photography naturally turns us into others, into partners in our own detachment from ourselves. "I instantaneously make another body, for myself, I transform myself in advance into an image," wrote Barthes about posing when photographed.

The representation of the self as an image underlies the "selfie" phenomenon, which refers to the construction of the self within a network of virtual players. Several of the exhibition's works emphasize the selfie as a mask of sorts, a self-performance that constitutes an inseparable part of the technology of representation in the current era. In these works, stories are mediated via a "digital mirror," which reflects thoughts about power, sexuality, marginalization, and the power to act. These stories engage with the positioning of identity within the vague context of the real and the virtual, against the backdrop of the celebrity phenomenon in the twenty-first century.

Participatng artists: Aline Alagem, Natalie Bookchin, Miri Davidovitz, Kate Durbin, Rachel Erez, Danielle Feldhaker, Simon Fujiwara, Carla Gannis, Marcello Geppetti, Philippe Halsman, Alison Jackson, Vardi Kahana, Noa Kahana, Orly Maiberg, Ohad Matalon, Ohad Milstein, Shani Nahmias, Helmut Newton, Angelika Sher, Cindy Sherman, Wolfgang Tillmans, Joel-Peter Witkin

 

Free entree to the exhibitions for children and youth up to the age of 18 during Sukkot  (6-11.10.17)

Entrance for children up to the age of 16 is conditional upon an adult accompanied by a fee! * Children over the age of 16 can enter without an adult * The offer is not valid for groups or student visits * Excludes events and workshops

 

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