CULTURE Israeli Artist’s Exhibit at Museum for Contemporary Art of Rome

By Pagine Ebraiche staff
 
The MACRO, Museum for Contemporary Art of Rome, will feature an exhibit by the Israeli artist and photographer Rafael Y. Herman. “The Night Illuminates the Night” (January 25 – March 26) was curated by Stefano Rabolli Pansera and Giorgia Calò, who sits on the board of the Jewish Community of Rome.
 
The exhibit features works created between 2010 and 2016. At the center of the pieces is a dialogue between Herman’s art and the masters of Western tradition who have depicted the land of Israel across the centuries.
 
The artist “traces back through this tradition using his own method: nocturnal photography, without electronic aid or digital manipulation, showing only what is visible to the naked eye. Like the great masters of the past, operating in the darkness of the night Herman puts himself in the condition of not being able to see the landscape, even in those places where he was born and raised. The intentional blindness enables the artist to gain access to reality in a new way, through nocturnal photographs and the developing of the film in the darkroom,” explains the exhibition’s introduction.
 
“The exhibition at MACRO Testaccio takes the form of a large environmental installation in which the works emerge from the darkness of the space like revelations. The poetry of Rafael Y. Herman develops in this dialectic between darkness and light. The artist’s gaze reveals a new approach to reality born and structured in darkness.”