Ronit Agassi. 14|02–05|05|2019 · 2019. 2. 19. · Ronit Agassi Ronit Agassi was born in 1948 at Merhavia Kibbutz in northern Israel. She studied at Oranim College in Tivon, and
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
Ronit Agassi. The Fifth Season14|02–05|05|2019
The art installation ‘The Fifth Season’ by Israeli artist Ronit Agassi will be shown at the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism from 14 February. Agassi’s works and objects, some of which were created especially for the Documentation Centre, revolve around the seasons and various aspects of human threat.
In her work, Ronit Agassi weaves together various strands of narrative referencing both the history of the twentieth century and her own biography. Born on a Kibbutz in 1948, the year the State of Israel was founded, Ronit Agassi’s childhood and youth were shaped by the myth of Israel as a collective agricultural utopia. At the same time, her early life was also affected by images of war, the military and the trauma of the Holocaust.
Taking the theme of the four seasons – autumn, winter, spring and summer – as well as a fifth season that has no name and neither a future nor a present, Ronit Agassi creates a disturbing yet poetic sequence of sculptures, readymades, textile works, drawings and a video, which she links associatively. Ronit Agassi likes to work with organic, fragile materials such as leaves, pebbles and Japan paper,
Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism
13.02.2019Press information
page 2/2
which she either paints or embroiders in fine stitches. In this way, the artist takes her audience on a journey to the fifth season whose sinis-ter tales only gradually emerge below its fragile surface. With ‘The Fifth Season’ Ronit Agassi has created a complex work full of allu-sions. Alongside historical motifs it also uses elements of fairy-tales, literature, music and art history, opening up disparate visual worlds.
The contrast between materiality and motif is shown, for example, in the nine leaves arranged in a tableaux. She has embroidered the delicate organic material in fine cross-stitch in earth and pastel tones in such a way that the faces of leading Nazi figures such as Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler become discernible in the ornamental pattern. Agassi collected the leaves in the Berlin district of Grunewald. It was from Grunewald station that 50,000 Jews were deported to the extermination camps between 1941 and 1945.
In its temporary exhibitions the Munich Documentation Centre delib-erately sets out to use new methodological concepts and approaches to address the history of the Nazi era or to reference current socio-political issues. The installation ‘The Fifth Season’ by Ronit Agassi does this through the medium of contemporary art. The fragile, or-ganic materiality of the installation forms a contrast to the sober documentation and educational approach of the permanent exhibition at the Munich Documentation Centre, which is dominated by text and images. Agassi’s objects develop a visual, emotional power, evoking sub-conscious associations for visitors and encouraging contempla-tion.
The art installation ‘The Fifth Season’ will run from 14 February to 5 May 2019 in the temporary exhibition area of the Documentation Centre. On 14 February, at 5.30 pm, a discussion will take place be-tween the artist, Ronit Agassi, and the curator, Sabine Brantl. There will also be several curator-guided tours of the exhibition.
For further information please visit: www.ns-dokuzentrum-muenchen.de
Ronit Agassi Ronit Agassi was born in 1948 at Merhavia Kibbutz in northern Israel. She studied at Oranim College in Tivon, and at the University of Haifa where she graduated in art education and art therapy. Until 1987, she worked as an art therapist at the Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv. Agassi had her first solo exhibition ‘Points of Encounter’ in 1980 at the Tref-fpunkt Gallery in Zurich. Ronit Agassi’s work has been shown all over the world, including in Britain and Germany as well as Israel. She has won many prizes and scholarships. In 2007 and 2014, she was Guest Artist at the Villa Waldberta, the international artist residence of the City of Munich.
Solo exhibitions1980 Points of Encounter. Treffpunkt Gallery, Zurich; ART ROOM Gallery, Baden
1982 Pastel Drawings. Margaret Fischer Gallery, London
1995 Giornata. Janco Dada Museum, Ein Hod
1999 Layers. Reinfeld Gallery, Bremen
2001 The Last Leaf. Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Herzliya
2002 Green House Testimonies – dialogue with Filipina artist Penny Velasquez. The Manila Museum of Visual Arts and Janco Dada