Two on Art

These days it is difficult to escape from tragic and negative news from Israel and from around the world. However, during February and March, we were lucky to encounter two art events that took us to other worlds: an annual art exhibit in Los Angeles and a biennale of art in the desert, 160 km east of Los Angeles. The following is a visual documentation of artwork selection.

The “LA Art Show” is an event in which over ninety galleries and museums worldwide exhibit paintings, sculptures, photography, and other forms of art expression. The work that immediately caught my attention was “The Birth of the Niamand,” by Slovak artist Viktor Frešo, presented by the Danubiana Museum in Bratislava, Slovakia.

There were other uplifting surprises. “The Journey,” by Guillermo Bert, showed 20 highly detailed, life-sized laser-cut wood sculptures honoring an army of immigrant heroes; Swiss artist Marck’s video creations; and Jerry Weber’s images created without using a camera through text-to-image AI software, to name a few.

The Desert-X Biennale exhibited site-specific works and artists from around the world. Sarah Meyohas’s installation immediately caught our attention. The fluid, serpentine form of the sculpture relates to the context with an architectural quality. For the preview presentation, she brought a dance company from Los Angeles, Jacob Jonas, that performed in synchronization with Meyohas’s work. These two works, the installation and the dancing group, respectively, reminded me of the works of two Israeli artists: sculptor Dani Karavan and choreographer Ohad Naharin.
On the opposite side of Meyohas’s freshness was the Hungarian-American environmental artist and writer Agnes Denes, 94. She had been ahead of her time in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the principles of the Land Art movement were established. Here, in the desert, she used the iconic form of a pyramid to express the life cycle of native vegetation.

Architect-artist Ronal Rael’s work Adobe Oasis built zigzagging walls entirely of mud, using a 3D printer and robotic programming. This approach could be meaningful for the future of architecture in many parts of the world.