https://www.shaikremer.com/shows daily 0.75 2017-12-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59b01d057131a56241d9daf5/1509032952479-H6GREELZIWNNJ1MRGC0O/koch_Gallery1.jpg Traveling Shows https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59b01d057131a56241d9daf5/1509033002110-9H4L04UQJZB9YYPBW5S6/koch_Gallery1.jpg Traveling Shows - Several projects are available (framed and crated for shipping) for ready-made turnkey exhibitions. If interested, please contact the artist to view a selection of current availability. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59b01d057131a56241d9daf5/1509032997931-IZJPGZ7SNYL28BEQ8IDW/aipad2017.jpg Traveling Shows - Links to other shows:   "Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera" - Tate Modern (London) "Reality Check,Truth and Illusion in Contemporary Photography" - Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) "W.T.C Concrete Abstract" - FMoPa. Tampa, USA Natural Conflict: Video and Photography from Israel, Nevada Museum of Art, NV Collecting Dust- Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel The Bronx Museum of the Arts Unfamiliar Asia - Beijing Photo Biennial, Beijing China BAM Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN   https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59b01d057131a56241d9daf5/1509032997394-1HDCXWZ93GQS09F3N9W6/BHC_MUSEUM.jpg Traveling Shows https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59b01d057131a56241d9daf5/1509032997927-6HXO5T95PI61V9NUD3YA/Blue+Sky+Gallery+18.jpg Traveling Shows https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59b01d057131a56241d9daf5/1509033007528-CX796K9D6VHC4QC1CRRX/Ta_Museum2.jpg Traveling Shows https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59b01d057131a56241d9daf5/1509033002581-8RCEWJRSYYNSR98QHDSR/china.jpg Traveling Shows https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59b01d057131a56241d9daf5/1509033005435-N47O96AQKYFXRSBD0UM5/lyon2.jpg Traveling Shows https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59b01d057131a56241d9daf5/1509033006594-FAA0A5FBMM19UTTJGVQI/lyon3.jpg Traveling Shows https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59b01d057131a56241d9daf5/1509033005494-R22CGTR961XVXJB3SPFB/KOCH_GALLERY2.jpg Traveling Shows https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59b01d057131a56241d9daf5/1509033006417-7MV496BRN85NB16M3U0L/TA_Museum.jpg Traveling Shows https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59b01d057131a56241d9daf5/1509033007709-RT4LUR77WKGDEGUE0OM0/traveling.jpg Traveling Shows Several projects are available (framed and crated for shipping) for ready-made turnkey exhibitions. If interested, please contact the artist to view a selection of current availability. https://www.shaikremer.com/projects daily 1.0 2023-06-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59b01d057131a56241d9daf5/1508121775684-69J9YZQ731QRKP63XY9C/krmr-3flatclean.jpg Projects https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59b01d057131a56241d9daf5/1508336427986-XHODNPV54R0LUK8RWC3O/Perception8.jpg Projects https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59b01d057131a56241d9daf5/1508336587146-1I8AGGQJTRDU51PVNWJS/CN7.jpg Projects https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59b01d057131a56241d9daf5/1508122367387-HX2KRGHN2FHE18ST1BQI/CF008301final.jpg Projects - Fallen Empires - Introduction by: Shai Kremer What if we ”speak with our eyes” of Israel’s past? There is a visual history over and under the surface, spoken by the land and its stones and by all the civilizations that have arisen there. Israel is a sophisticated and manipulated palimpsest. Extensively covered by the media, debated by nations, claimed by religions, it is also a case study about the phenomena of empires. By visually highlighting Israel’s vast archaeological repertoire, its architecture and its ruins, I question how they are used today in the discourse of the Israeli-Palestinian situation and the future of the country. In the preceding pages, you have seen images containing, in one single frame, sediments of periods covering thousands of years and numerous governmental systems. For example, around a small private aerodrome near the ancient city of Be’er Sheva, airplane hangars dating from the British Mandate period (1920–1948) are scattered. Over Zion Gate in the old city of Jerusalem, a surveillance camera scrutinizes our age, itself embedded in stones from the reign of Sulei- man, and pockmarked by bullet holes from the 1948 war. Finally,in the ruined Palestinian village of Lifta, one can see the light of the construction site of a future rescue exit tunnel from an underground emergency nuclear bunker of the Israeli parliament. Such cases open a window through time on a landscape so familiar that we do not question it anymore Israel is overloaded with sediments of past empires. More than half of the current IDF (Israel Defense Forces) strongholds rest on the ruins of military sites of former empires. The recycling of these spaces, from one conqueror to the next, shows how most empires tried to conquer and rule this land, with one similar outcome: they eventually failed. Dozens of excavated archaeological strata tell this complex multicultural saga—ironically enough, the remains are here to remind us that no human construct is everlasting. My images of these vestiges of occupation are a platform for discussion about the legitimacy and efficiency of imperialism and its use of power. The camera unearths testimonies from the past and shows a different perspective. It reveals inconvenient truths and explores the landscape as a place of amnesia and erasure. It exposes Israel as a strategic site where the past has been buried and history veiled with natural beauty highlighting Adorno’s remark that “the beautiful in nature is history standing still and refusing to unfold.” Every cultural struggle over territory involves overlapping memories, narratives and physical structures. Edward Said underlined this in his book, Invention, Memory and Place, stating that memory, and its translation into history, is far from being neutral. It touches on questions of identity, nationalism, power and authority. Memory is used by nations to construct loyalty to country, tradition and faith. I am pointing my camera at the landscape in order to dig and explore a reality of Israel behind the headlines and the touristic adoration, to reveal the landscape as a cultural force, an instrument in the construction of national and social identities. Only by under- standing the mix of geographical landscape with historical memory can one understand the persistence of the conflict and the difficulty in resolving it. Sigmund Freud, in Civilization and Its Discontents, uses the analogy of Rome to explain that it is overwhelming, hence impossible, that each building and statue from all periods of Roman historyexist simultaneously in our consciousness. However, time has come to open our eyes to the many realities and the various antagonistic narratives that cohabit on the Israeli landscape. What can be shown photographically that would express this question of layering of narratives? How does the experience of ruin—and ruin upon ruin— appear today in Israel? W.J.T. Mitchell writes in Landscape and Power: “. . . the landscape looks back in some way at its beholders, returning their gaze with a blank, impassive stare, its face scarred with the traces of violence and destruction and (even more important) with the violent constructions that erupt on its surface. . . . The landscape becomes a magical object, an idol that demands human sacrifices, a place where symbolic, imaginary and real violence implode on an actual social space. . . . The fantasy has now been realized in an idolatry of a place, a territorial mysticism enforced by bullets and bulldozers. The challenge is to sound out this idolatry, to unbind its fascination.” This photographic document points out opposing narratives and strays away from one-sided simplistic views. My intent is to offer a stage where viewers can think about new relationships between the different histories and identities, assembled and disassembled in the wake of the creation of Israel. It is an incitement to open a critical and civic discussion about this country as a place where different perspectives existed and still exist, and to reflect on new possibilities today. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59b01d057131a56241d9daf5/1508207648026-V0W5FTLLX6OBDNLBKD9Z/Shai_Kremer_001.jpg Projects - Hanging Bunker, San Francisco U.S.A, 2014 This bunker is located on the Pacific Ocean coast in a site called "Devil's Slide", few miles south of San Francisco. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59b01d057131a56241d9daf5/1508527792031-86GBLWDY76KGD6JKB40B/Wythe+Avenue+%26+S+6th+Street+-+Williamsburg%2C+2016.jpg Projects https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59b01d057131a56241d9daf5/1508260086113-54TCX91CVGH4726WA43U/A_CF038647.jpg Projects - Handle with care I built each sculpture out of rusted metal and driftwood found on the New York shores. Like ancient migrations, they follow the water. Their portraits speak of the transience, vulnerability and universality of each human. Art is not just a narrative, it is about how it is made. I immersed myself in the long process of creating each sculpture, including it in a chosen landscape, register it in an image as the final object. The sculpture absorbs the political landscape, while I document these 'undocumented immigrants'. Art requires freedom and courage. No 'formulas'. You must always walk new unfamiliar ways, to avoid "producing" and keep "creating" instead. Moving away from photography meant for me new discoveries, new challenges; I am a perpetual migrant myself. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59b01d057131a56241d9daf5/1508252100825-JDCXZKQNPBDJHYX4W87X/NE15.jpg Projects - New York - Notes from the Edges Fifteen years ago I landed in New York as a new immigrant. I have been photographing the city ever since, using the landscape as a platform to question, discuss and understand my surroundings, The iconic power of New York is so strong that we tend to forget what lies at its core. The “capital of the world” as it calls itself, had to confront two major crises over the past decade: first, recovering from 9/11 - or as Slavoj Zizek (1) puts it, the mega terror attack on the Twin Towers, experienced as a television spectacle. Secondly, adapting to the 2008 Wall Street crash and ensuing recession. Both events changed our perspective on a familiar urban landscape. Through my images I am striving to shed light on the tension between neglect and growth, between destruction and reconstruction, revealing the forces behind capitalist economy and the consequences it brings about. As an outsider, I reveal a personal and somehow intimate view of a less-explored New York, while following its evolution. After struggling with the verticality of Manhattan not fitting my frame, and the lack of horizon line in my compositions, I discovered the edges of the city. Endless mapping and deciphering of New York fringes offer not only mental and visual quietness but most importantly, like any edges, they are a reflection on the center. "All that is solid melts into air."(2) Destruction and reconstruction are the motivating force behind capitalist economy, which is the economic system at the core of the world's big cities. The metropolis, in which destruction and reconstruction are constantly discernible in the physical human environment, is the paradigm of modernity. Following Marx, Marshall Berman maintains that there is dialectic interplay between the unfolding modernization of the urban environment and the development of modernist art and thought. ”The innate dynamism of the modern economy, and of the culture that grows from this economy, annihilates everything that it creates - physical environments, social institutions, metaphysical ideas, artistic visions, moral values - in order to create more, to go on endlessly creating the world anew. This drive draws all modern men and women into its orbit, and forces us all to grapple with the question of what is essential, what is meaningful, what is real in the maelstrom in which we move and live."(3) Intercultural encounters, destruction, reconstruction, angst, hope, illusions, precariousness, chaos, are all felt in the urban sphere with enormous force. City dwellers become lively and creative people capable of inspiring change, yet we pay a heavy toll. Constant change also leads to destruction and loss of entire communities with their particular identities, bring in turn alienation, suffering, and anxiety. Starting from the margins of the city, I journeyed inward to an unfamiliar and sometimes ominous New York, noticing how the periphery echoes the center. Transient and unnoticed landscapes exist along fraying borders where the physical presence of the urban structure begins to break down and rejoin nature. In these ex-centric spaces, where the quiet resounds with power, one can see the horizon, some kind of undeveloped land, raw surfaces, soil... Such contemporary “flanerie”(4) brought me to enigmatic encounters that reveal the city’s unconscious, like the see-through layers of the landscape reflect the sociological strata of the place. In the process of creating this observer’s diary, with my own historical, analytical and poetic perspectives, I also found out how it reflected on my own story of adjusting to the city. Confronting, as Baudrillard calls it, the living utopia: “It is a world completely rotten with wealth, power, senility, indifference, Puritanism and mental hygiene, poverty and waste, technological futility and aimless violence, and yet I cannot help but feel it has about it something of the dawning of the universe. Perhaps because the entire world continues to dream of New York, even as New York dominates and exploits it.” (5) Notes: 1. Slavoj Zizek Welcome to the desert of the real. (London and New York,Verso 2002) 2 and 3. Marshall Berman All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (London and New York: Verso, 1983). 4. Walter Benjamin The Arcades Project (1927–40) edited by Rolf Tiedemann (Harvard University Press, 1999) 5. Jean Baudrillard America (Verso 1986) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59b01d057131a56241d9daf5/1508125771594-3HBN7VD7V32EVF1V964I/Abstract%231.jpg Projects - WORLD TRADE CENTER: CONCRETE ABSTRACT An evocation of site, a remembrance of tragedy, a progression towards healing – Shai Kremer’s Concrete Abstract series at once aims for individual and universal response to the destruction and rebuilding of the World Trade Towers following September 11th, 2001. Kremer describes his Concrete Abstract series as a means to “pay homage to America, to New York, to their trauma and their recovery.” The artist evokes the renovations and rebuilding of a once devastated sight as representative of a fresh start and ongoing therapeutic process for New York City. Like his past series, Kremer maintains “a post-traumatic gaze to the cityscape of Manhattan - and by extrapolation, to the sociological landscape of America.” Kremer combined copious images to illustrate the site’s former self as well as its years of reconstruction. In the most recent works,* The Tribute in Light*, a memorial installation of 88 searchlights forming two columns of light in place of the towers, brings new life to the hopeful images. The strength of the rich blue of the façade of the Freedom Tower is a testament to how far we have come in the rebuilding process. Kremer records a compelling interpretation, in which a process linking “accumulation, destruction, and reconstruction” become “the paradigm of modernity.” The zenith of that modernity, the now tallest building in the United States, is a proud symbol of our strength. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59b01d057131a56241d9daf5/1677790064974-T77WXIRQ3579KKKIYZ6Z/edge6.jpg Projects The Edge of knowledge In this project Kremer takes the viewer on a cosmic and philosophical journey, a reflection on Heidegger's fundamental question: "why is there something instead of nothing?" “…in the chain that does not begin nor end. Randomly, ever since…” (Meir Ariel) I started the work from a collection of satellite images taken by NASA over several years. By weaving them together, I let the viewer perceive simultaneously opposite vantage points: looking towards the earth and then onto the moon. Then to this, I intertwined microscopic photographs of biological cells. The merging of microscopic and telescopic images question both our origin and our destination. In this photographic metaphor mixing science and philosophy, the final pieces become enigmatic visual haikus. They are puzzles about scale, equating space and time, past and future. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59b01d057131a56241d9daf5/1688140743770-NWY33Z4DBXL0M0R1UNKI/wtc_show.jpg Projects https://www.shaikremer.com/contacts-links-1 daily 0.75 2024-01-17 https://www.shaikremer.com/art-and-crosscultural-dialogue-identity-and-diversity daily 0.75 2017-10-26 https://www.shaikremer.com/about daily 0.75 2018-01-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59b01d057131a56241d9daf5/1508270039540-VQV0MG5MMYKAJ4D4DUEA/bookIL+2.jpg Books & Press https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59b01d057131a56241d9daf5/1508270025449-BOPE0J5MZRR0ZCX5BHH5/bookFE.jpg Books & Press https://www.shaikremer.com/new-page daily 0.75 2024-08-23