NYAB Event - Shai Kremer "Broken Promised Land"

Shai Kremer "Broken Promised Land"

Julie Saul Gallery

This event has ended.

The Julie Saul Gallery presents our first solo exhibition of photographs by Shai Kremer. Since 1999 Kremer has set about documenting the "ominous imprint of the military on the Israeli landscape- and reflectively, on Israeli society." Working in color in a beautiful documentary style, Kremer's vision is both clinical and emotional. The traditional Zionist attitude of a poetic affinity and love of the scorched and often barren Israeli landscape blends with a critique of the remnants from Israel's longstanding violent struggles with Arab and Palestinian neighbors.
The exhibition features ten large color prints, including two panoramas. Subjects include the separation wall, training sites, detritus from past conflicts and the scars left on the landscape. These images collectively make up the vision of Israel as it is today. Instead of shock, Kremer cerates aesthetic, orderly compositions that parallel the defense mechanisms developed to protect Israelis from the powerful reality of the current political situation. As Kremer as stated, "my goal is to reveal how every piece of land has become infected with loaded sediments of the ongoing conflict."
A hardcover monograph entitled Infected Landscape: Israel, Broken Promised Land with 66 color plates will be officially published in September 2008 by Dewi Lewis publishing, but will be available in advance at the exhibition. Sylvia Wolf, photography scholar and director of the Henry Art Museum in Seattle has contributed an essay as well as Moshe Zuckerman.