The National Gallery of Art presents an exceptional 2016 summer event, the exhibition Positive Images for Field and Forest by the contemporary Israeli artist Sharon Yaari. With the help of project grant provided by the Good Will Foundation, it is one of his biggest personal exhibitions in Europe, and his first in Lithuania.
First and foremost, Yaari’s exhibition is a unique chance to get to know about a different and little-known photographic tradition. Having studied photography in Israel, Great Britain and the USA, Yaari creates large-format images of condensed content. These are photographs that lack the haphazard and spontaneous qualities that are characteristic of documentary photography; on the contrary, most of the images are carefully thought-out and even consciously constructed. The photographer uses photography as a means of revealing and expressing, through a concentrated image, the intersections of space, a certain place, time and history, and also the meanings that these intersections bring out. He takes photographs in his homeland, but he is not trying to impress us. He sees Israel as a country with a complicated history, as a multilayered issue, full of challenges and open to creative exploration. Invoking photography as a means of visual thinking, he investigates nature, the city, politics, society, history, architecture, archaeology, etc. His photographs come into being when the dimensions of time, space and history intersect. The meaning in Yaari’s images hides not in the outer shapes of the objects, unusual landscapes or strange situations, but rather in the exposure of layers of cultural history and today’s reality.
Curator Ieva Mazūraitė-Novickienė
Organizer LAM National Gallery of Art, Vilnius
In cooperation with Sommer Contemporary Art Gallery, Tel Aviv.
Sponsors: Good Will Foundation, Embassy of Israel in Lithuania, Artis Grant Program, Lithuanian Culture Council, Ukrainian airlines, Ad Rem group, Exterus, Jewish Community of Lithuania
Media Support: daily Lietuvos rytas, lrytas.lt, journal Centras, culture festival “Culture Night”