In Herzliya, Three Artists Reimagine Objects, Bodies and Materials

Yahav Gal

Three artists from the Master’s Program in Art Education at Beit Berl’s Midrasha School of Art are presenting their graduation works at Mishkan HaOmanim in Herzliya from September 8 to 28. The exhibition is curated by internationally acclaimed artist Roee Rosen.

Held for the third consecutive year, the exhibition brings together works by Salma Samara, Yahav Gal and Tamar Averbuch, three artists with distinct creative worlds who each explore, in their own way, the transformation, recomposition and hybridization of materials, objects and images.

The works are characterized by a deliberately understated, sometimes minimalist aesthetic that nevertheless reveals underlying tensions, questions and forms of subversion.

Transforming the Traces of Bureaucracy

At the heart of Salma Samara’s practice is Violation of Order, an artist’s book created from fragments of destroyed administrative letters. The artist collects words from documents shredded by her own office shredder and reassembles them into a new poetic text.

Fragments of institutional, administrative and bureaucratic correspondence thus become the raw material of an artistic work that transforms the traces of bureaucracy into a new form of language.

Yahav Gal, meanwhile, develops a sculptural practice based on appropriation and the confrontation of different materials.

His work combines various types of clay with ready-made objects, creating forms that appear both familiar and unfamiliar. Each new piece challenges the previous one, prompting the artist to continually shift his own points of reference.

The practice is rooted in an ongoing process of experimentation, in which material becomes a means of questioning traditional categories of sculpture and the relationship between the artistic object and the everyday object.

Hybrid Bodies Between Painting and Sculpture

In Tamar Averbuch’s work, bodies, organs, animals and objects come together in hybrid pictorial compositions. The boundaries between the human, the animal and the object gradually disappear.

Her painting process remains rapid, with thin layers of paint and a constant movement from one body to another. The result is at once poetic, eccentric and anarchic.

Created four years ago, the Studio track within the Midrasha’s Master’s Program has gradually developed around an intensive approach to artistic practice. The program is led by artist Shahar Yahalom, under the academic direction of Dr. Vered Herouti.

Salma Samara

Students have access to a dedicated studio as well as to the Midrasha’s various workshops and facilities, including those dedicated to photography, sculpture, printmaking and media. The program also includes individual mentoring, workshops with artists and researchers, as well as meetings, lectures, exhibitions and critique sessions.

The track is integrated into the Midrasha’s art and film departments, allowing students to work within an active artistic community while gradually developing their own visual language.

The teaching team includes Roee Rosen, Ruti Ginzburg, Dalia Markovich, Efrat Biberman, Irena Gordon and Nimrod Matan, alongside other artists and researchers.

For curator Roee Rosen, the works presented in the exhibition are not simply the culmination of an academic journey. Rather, they represent a starting point in the development of each artist’s independent practice.

Tamar Averbuch

The exhibition offers visitors an opportunity to discover three artists at a distinctive moment in their development, when research, experimentation and uncertainty themselves become an essential part of the work.

The exhibition opens on September 8 at 7 p.m.

Caroline Haïat