Exhibition: Here, There and Nowhere

The exhibition Here, There and Nowhere examines landscape representations in works from the collections of Haifa's museums, and proposes a movement between the familiar, the other, and the unknown. Through a wide range of printmaking techniques, the exhibition presents the medium as a dynamic visual language used to translate and explore space. The exhibition's starting point is the "Here." This space presents the works of Hermann Struck, one of the pioneering artists of printmaking and one of the founders of the field, who laid the foundations for this medium in Israel. Struck's landscapes, ranging between views of the Land of Israel and documentation of his travels around the world, engage in dialogue with local Jewish and Arab artists from different periods. This is a multi-generational, multi-voiced encounter that anchors the concept of place within the historical and cultural context of our region. William Henry Bartlett (b. England), Approach to Haifa, Bay of Acre, 1838 From the local space, the exhibition moves on to the "There." This space brings together works depicting views that cannot be immediately identified, and landscapes detached from a specific local context. In this space, the power of print as a tool for reformulating geographic reality comes to the fore — reality that, under the action of the press, becomes an image that provokes thought about the definition of space. The movement concludes in "Nowhere" – a space of departure from the familiar. In this space, landscape images become mysterious, dream-like and undecipherable. This is a twilight zone in which familiar reality is abandoned in favor of an experience of placelessness. Print is an active and evolving artistic field. Through processes of duplication, etching, erosion, subtraction and transfer, it allows artists from different disciplines to enrich their personal language. The choice of this medium stems from the possibilities inherent in the indirect working process: the encounter between plate, press and paper creates a suspension that allows the image to be taken apart and rebuilt. The result is a richness of visual expressions that highlight the vitality of the medium as a tool for contemporary art.