Siman Tov Ronen
Surveyors
Curator: Orimian Dan
Opening: Saturday, 30 August 2014
Closing: Saturday, 18 October 2014
Gallery talk: Thursday, 18 September 2014 17:00
The Virtues of Measurement
For the past fifteen years, Ronen Siman-Tov has been carrying Avraham Ofek’s (nearly extinguished) torch, while traversing, in wonderful isolation, the high road of creation, marked by the existential and religious. Painting after painting, Ronen Siman-Tov ponders the riddle of existence and the metaphysical meaning of being a man, between earth and heaven. It seems that in his “measurers” paintings, the artist has refined the form and content of his statement, by going further into the sublime, “Hegelian” unity of the finite and the infinite, the material and the spiritual, the sensuous and the meditative.
The “Measurers” series marks a dramatic shift in Siman-Tov’s artistic grammar, since the faded spaces and miniaturized figures are now replaced by an approach that is clearly Baroque, and which links Siman-Tov’s grammar to that of the early Velázquez and even Caravaggio. By this I mean that the paintings have become much more theatrical, orchestrated in a much more dramatic light, marked by darkness, while at the same time a significant part of the figures are represented monumentally (ironic as this may be) and with a solid figurativeness. However, Siman-Tov’s Baroque belongs to the new millennium and accordingly, it is aware of itself as décor for an anti-monumental vision, which may even be comic.
What is the meaning of the darkness that Ronen Siman-Tov has imposed upon his pictorial world? It is a darkness of punishment. Its horizons shine with light and smoke; a trace of red in the sky or around a mountain top disclose a great conflagration and if you will – “The reddening eye of the sky slowly darkens on borders that are up in smoke” (Nathan Alterman, “The Silver Tray”). Either way, a Holocaust-stricken world, which more than it is prepared for the reception of the Torah or “the one and only miracle” is far more desperate than in previous paintings. A spiritual darkness? An existential darkness? A social darkness? A theological darkness?. Nonetheless and despite everything, neither the artist nor the fruits of his spirit will forgo the chance, meager and hopeless as it may be, to rescue from the furnace of destruction the last, glowing ember from the Temple’s altar; to experience, even if but a portion, but a pitiful fragment, of the highest secrets and the most hidden; to make a desperate effort to know, in a time and place of distress, the existence of the secret of secrets of that which cannot be known or discovered at all. (“The Zohar”)
Gideon Ofrat
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Born in Jerusalem, lives and works in Israel
Education
1997-1999 Post graduate studies (M.F.A), the department of Art, Bezalel Academy of Art and Design
1985-1992 Master’s degree in Architecture and town planning ( M.arc), Delft University, The Netherlands
Solo Exhibitions
2010 'Youx close', The Gallery, Paris; Maidservant at the Sea', Bineth gallery, Tel Aviv
2009 'Wanted', Nachshon gallery, Kibbutz Nachshon.
2008 'Looking for a king', Inga Contemporary Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
2005 'Closeness', The Heder Contemporary Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
2003 'Drawing Installation', Artists' House Jerusalem; 'Without Identity', drawings/paintings, the Municipal Art Gallery, Rehovot
2000 “The Acrobat and the Swimmer", Haifa Museums, The National Maritime Museum
Selected Group Exhibitions
2014 'Journeys', Israel Museum, Jerusalem
2011 'Nimrod's Descendants', Artist's House, Jerusalem; 'Non Stigma' coproduction Artists and schizophrenics, Bar Illan University
The 4th Biennale of Drawing in Israel, Artists' house, Jerusalem; 'Voyage': Boats in Israeli Art, Bet Binyamini, Tel Aviv
2010 'Canaan', Braverman gallery, Tel Aviv; 'A traverse un cercle de regards', Cite international des Arts, Paris
'Entangled', Art cube Gallery, Jerusalem; 'Urban Diary', 'Gaps', Witzo gallery, Haifa.
2009 'Playing Identities', Bet Hatfuzot, Tel Aviv university; 'four rooms', Artists' house Jerusalem
'Body and Shadow', Dwek Gallery, Mishkanot Sha'ananim, Jerusalem; 'Big Spender', 5- place for art, Tel Aviv
'Self Criticism', Haitach, Herzelia; 'Midnight', Studio 22, Tel Aviv; 'Only Quotation', Shoeva gallery.
2008 'Face Fragments' (faces of Jerusalem), Artists' house, Jerusalem; 'Edges', The New Gallery, Jerusalem
Menofim, Artists studios', Jerusalem; Beno Kalev collection at open museums, Tefen
'Difduf', artists studios sketches, Seemann gallery for contemporary Art, Tel Aviv
The 3rd Biennale of Drawing in Israel, Artists' house, Jerusalem
2007 'Longings' (with poets), Yad Ben Zvi, Jerusalem; 'Too Hot', Heder, contemporary art gallery, Tel Aviv
''Why a Hat", Ashdod Museum; Yavne Municipal Art Gallery, 'Magen David'
2006 'Football in the Museum', Ashdod Museum; 'Drawing in Space', Artists House, Tel Aviv
'Downtown Jerusalem', Barbur gallery and Artists Studios Jerusalem; 'Sketch and Drawing', Technion Gallery, Haifa
2005 'The Days of Innocents-Change of Reality', corporation Agripas gallery, Jerusalem
'The Magic of the Circus', Tel Aviv Museum of Art; 'You Don’t Look Hungry to Me', Limbus Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
2004 Tel Aviv Portraits, The Tel Aviv Municipal Building Elevation; 'Sports in Arts' ,Israel Museum of Art
'Childhood Drawers', Rehovot Municipal Art Gallery
2003 'Towards of the Caravan', The Beno Kalev collection, Tivon Gallery; 'Human Rights Week', Russian Courtyards, Jerusalem
2002 'Home Sweet Home', Ramat-Gan Israeli Art Museum; 'Heharat Shulaim Israeli Backyard 1997-2000', Jerusalem
'Heharat Shulaim', Fiscal Official, Drawing Installation, Museum of Underground Prisoners in Jerusalem
1999 Art focus 3, Biennale of Contemporary international Art Jerusalem; Bezalel post graduates program exhibition.
Biennale of young Artists, Rome, Italy
1998 “The garden as a Metaphor” the Botanical Garden, Givat Ram, Jerusalem
Special projects
Project Artists and Schizophrenics coproduction of Enosh founds and Jansen Company
Works in Collections
The Tel Aviv Museum of Art, works sold in Christies New York,
Haifa Museum of Art, Ramat Gan Museum of Israeli Art, , Ashdod Museum Ashdod Israel, Hapoalim bank collection, Beno Kalev collection ,Gideon Ofrat collection, The Bronfman collection ,The Heder Contemporary Art Gallery, Amalia Urbach Collections, , De-Haas leuwinstein Amsterdam-Holland, Jacqueline Friedman 'Passage de Retz,' Paris, Pierre Berge –Paris, Erica Gideon-wilder collection Switzerland , Rani Rahav collection Israel, Yael Keni, Kibbutz Nahshon gallery,Sara Erlich Gallery Tel Aviv, Oded Shatil collection, Privet collections in Israel ,.U.S.A, Canada, France, England, Switzerland, Netherland ,Italy ,Germany
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Gallery Talk About The Exibition Surveyors
With the artists Ronen Siman-Tov and the curator Dan Orimian
Thurs., 18.9.14 at 5 pm