Opening reception: Saturday, March 8th, 12 – 2 pm.
Artist talk: Saturday, March 8th, 1 - 2pm
Sharon Ya’ari in conversation with Christopher Phillips, Curator, International Center of Photography. Co-presented by Andrea Meislin Gallery and Artis as part of Armory Arts Week.
Andrea Meislin Gallery is pleased to announce Sharon Ya’ari’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, which will be on view March 8 through April 26, 2014. The exhibition is concurrent with Sharon Ya’ari’s one-person show at the Tel Aviv Museum Leap Toward Yourself, curated by Urs Stahel. Leap Toward Yourself is accompanied by a comprehensive publication published by Steidl and the Tel Aviv Museum.
Sharon Ya’ari’s photographs are intimate depictions of moments in life. His work seeks what Urs Stahel calls “the morphology of everyday life”; a gesture, a moment, an ordinary site. Taken with hyper-sensitivity to the common and the familiar, Ya’ari’s images manage to transform the mundane into an open-ended question; one that calls for a suspension of the gaze and invites the viewer for a new type of observation.
In his work, Ya’ari returns to the same sites time and time again. He observes gradual, miniscule and uncontrollable change; and presents the viewer with objects that lost function, sites drained of meaning. Through his photographs, Ya’ari bestows these locations with a multidimensional body; representing what has gone unnoticed, yet still bares a collective significance. Ya’ari explains “I like being able to observe something over a long period of time, unselfconsciously admiring the complex circumstances by which it had come into being. The images have a story, usually one related to existence and near-extinction.”
While Ya’ari’s images are firmly rooted in a specific time and place, they don’t conform to a specific pattern or mold. The images raise questions of how to represent what is already representational, how to manage the gap between the ideal and the real and how to reconcile the subtlety of the photographic gesture with the over-bearing political context.
The works presented in this show talk about ideas of possibility and impossibility; they are anchored in a certain reality, yet allude to a scope broader than their locality; they are an investigation of photography; as a medium, and as a history. Ya’ari’s images are thus multilayered works of art that not only refer to history, location and politics, but also to the act of photography itself.
About the Artist
Sharon Ya’ari was born in 1966 in Israel. He lives and works in Tel Aviv. Ya’ari received a BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem, and an MPhil from University of Derby, England. He is a recipient of the Constantiner Photography Award for an Israeli Artist, Tel Aviv Museum; the Nathan Gottesdiner Foundation Israeli Art Prize, Tel Aviv Museum; and the Israeli Culture and Sports Ministry Prize among others. Ya’ari has presented solo and group shows at museums and galleries worldwide. His photographs have been featured in numerous exhibitions including the ICP’s First Triennial Strangers New York, (2003); The New Hebrews, Martin Gropius Bau Museum, Berlin (2005); Dateline Israel: New Photography and Video Art, The Jewish Museum, New York (2008); and Looking In, Looking Out: The Window in Art, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2010). His one-person show Leap Toward Yourself is currently presented at the Tel Aviv Museum.