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Michal Helfman—Eli Petel—Alexandra Zuckerman

April 12 – June 1, 2014 Opening: Saturday, April 12, 6:30 pm

MK Search Art

Corso Italia, 14 San Giovanni Valdarno

MK Search Art is glad to announce “Michal Helfman—Eli Petel—Alexandra Zuckerman,” a presentation of artworks by Israeli artists Michal Helfman, Eli Petel and Alexandra Zuckerman. Conceived as three concise solo presentations, each artist will exhibit the work in one of the rooms of MK Search Art gallery space, which is located in a historical building in the center of the town of San Giovanni Valdarno in Tuscany, Italy.

Following these premises the exhibition will play with a variety of languages, references and media and on one hand it will underline the visible differences characterizing the practice of these three artists and on the other hand it will highlight possible connections between them. In fact the practices of Michal Helfman, Eli Petel and Alexandra Zuckerman are very distant from each other and yet these three artists belong to the same milieu, they know each other work and in some occasion have even worked together and shared ideas and engaged in conversations.

Working with video, sculpture, painting, drawing, installations and performance, the modus operandi of Michal Heflman (*1973, Tel Aviv) aims towards a deep analysis of issues such as history, violence and culture, issues that are presented through the notion of stage and its related vocabulary. Almost theatrical, ultimately all her works are “scenes” that the artist – who worked as a set designer for night clubs in Tel Aviv and studied dance for many years and now involves dancers in many of her videos and performances – constructs in order to use it as a channel for the distribution of themes that belong to the often tragic and always adventurous history of humankind. At MK Search Art Helfman will show the video A Duet for a Boy and a Flame (2010).

Often employing different media at the same time in order to create meta-linguistic installations and interventions, some very spectacular and some more minute, the work of Eli Petel (*1974, Jerusalem) is deeply rooted in his identity as Sephardic Iraqi-Jew, more generally defined as Oriental Jew or “Misrakhi” in Hebrew. However the multifaceted and easy to misunderstand notion of identity is for Petel just the starting point, a conceptual strategy, an excuse he uses to establish an inner and semi-spiritual dialogue between the artwork and the viewer. In fact all his works own a double nature: on one side they are surgically analyzing the history of art and the history and legacy of the state of Israel and of the Jewish people and on the other side they are all deeply emotional, spiritual and sentimental. At MK Search Art, Petel will exhibit a crying self-portrait – The Whiner (2010) – and picture of his hometown – East Jerusalem (2007-11).

Rooted in the history of painting, the sophisticated and laborious oeuvres of Alexandra Zuckerman (*1981, Moscow) result from different kind of traditions that the artist mixes without solution of continuity. From Medieval and early Renaissance paintings and tapestries to comic books; from fairy tales’ illustrations to Magritte’s iconic compositions; from Eastern European legends – the artist was born in Russia and immigrated to Israel at the age of 9 – to the figures depicted by Pierre Klossowski: all her artworks are full of déjà vu and yet completely contemporary and brand new. Executed through a unique and time-consuming techniqueinvented by the artist – who prefers to work in her small domestic space in Jaffa –, Zuckerman’s tableaux are open windows to a parallel world. For MK Search Art she will present a pencil-on-paper triptych entitled After The Moon (2013).

MK Search Art, San Giovanni Valdarno/New Delhi

Italy: Corso Italia 14, 52027, San Giovanni Valdarno, Arezzo, Italy

India: B-5 Anupam Plaza Srl Aurobindo Marg Hauz Khas, New Delhi 10016

www.mksearchart.com

info@mksearchart.com

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