VIGO, SPAIN.- The Museum of Contemporary Art presents the exhibit Inside Out: Contemporary Artists from Israel through October 8. To complete the Museum’s exhibition program for the following months, MARCO of Vigo presents the group exhibition INSIDE-OUT. Contemporary Artists from Israel, curated by Octavio Zaya, included on the group of exhibitions produced by MARCO –four out of five– organized until now by the museum over 2006. The show coincides in time with the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Spain and Israel.

The curator has chosen a selection of 14 artists who has not been at all chosen as the representatives of Israeli art, but as a sample of the complexity and diversity of contemporary art in that country, with subjective visions, with their contradictions, multiple senses and interpretations. It tries to get closer to the character and sense of the artistic practices and production of a group of contemporary artists from Israel. Far from any institutional speech or any attempt in order to politic instrumentalization, there is on the other hand a clear intention of contributing to a better diffusion of the work of some artists –most of them emerging artists who begin to stand out in the international scene– who for different reasons are almost unknown in Spain.

The fact is that it is really difficult to mention the name of Israel without being irremediably linked to questions that, very little or nothing, have to do with the intention of the exhibition project. “In fact –quoting the curator’s words for the catalogue– every single thing that has to do with Israel has been already marked or signified in a way in our modern conscience (...) As we all know, the realities in which is inspired and debate, where it finds and loses, those that Israeli contemporary art makes go beyond or ignores—or by Israeli artists around the conditions and vicissitudes of artistic practise in a country on a constant state of emergency — are tragic and extraordinary.”

This new generation of artists seem to have overcome the Zionist idea of the unity of Israel, but the works on the exhibition have a an element in common: they pay attention to the idea of territory and landscape, that still remains a constant. Landscapes and visions of nature are landscapes and visions of the human being, where ideas and approaches meet around the fragility of existence. From the allegoric view of the tree felling shown in Ori Gersht’s videoinstallation The Forest to the landscape/memory in Varda Getzow’s installation, a powerful presence full of memories shows us that nature has memory from the past. From Gal Weinstein’s recreation of a mythical for the Israeli people as it is Lake Huleh, to Sharon Ya’ari’s documental photography, with that sensibility in relation to the abandoned and deserted, to the seemingly lazy and without singularity. Finally, Miki Kratsman’s Territory Series would have no sense without the general context of her works on the occupied territories.

On the other hand, Keren Assaf’s idealistic and pintoresque view of the American-Israeli dream, the place of the individual in a city like Tel Aviv in Yael Bartana’s video, Guy Ben-Her’s diary of a shipwrecked, Adi Nes’ aestheticist and symbolic images of the Israel troops, and also Rona Yefman’s images about human sexuality and the relationship between the individuals and their bodies, with the landscape and the social environment.

Finally, magic spaces like Taila Keinan’s curl on a constant transition or the magic of the perfect balance —just as a trick— in Eliezer Sonnenschein’s mountains of playing cards, with a fragility similar to that of Nadav Weissman’s installation, dwelled by ‘characters’ existing in a dimension half-way between childhood and maturity. And also, poetic references to mortality, vulnerability, boundaries, frontiers and, by extension, to the idea of territory and to the conflict between Israel and Palestine, in Sigalit Landau’s video.

During 2005 Zaya presented several exhibitions: After the Revolution. Contemporary Artists from Iran –Koldo Mitxelena, San Sebastián, 2005 and Kunstforeningen, Copenhague, 2006–, Carmela García: the Hole in Space –CAAM, Las Palmas, and Centro Juan Ismael, Fuerteventura, 2005–, and Shirin Neshat: The last Word –MUSAC, 2005; CAAM, 2006–. He is currently working on an exhibition, bringing together several video works by Jesper Just and also on a survey of the video-installations of Candice Breitz. In addition, Octavio Zaya is organizing the 1st Biennial of Photography in Petach-Tikva, Israel.

Born in the Canary Islands and based in New York since 1978, Octavio Zaya is an independent curator. Advisor of Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, MUSAC (León, Spain) and co-director of Atlántica, a bilingual quarterly magazine published by CAAM, Canary Islands, he belongs to the editorial board for NKA Journal of Contemporary African Art (Cornell University, N.Y.) and Lab 71 (N.Y.), an electronic art magazine on the web, and is a US correspondent for Flash Art. He was one of the curators of Documenta 11 (2002), as part of the curatorial team under the direction of Okwui Enwezor, and one of the curators of the 1st and 2nd Johannesburg Biennial (1995 and 1997).

On the occasion of the show, MARCO and ACTAR are co-editing a bilingual catalogue (Spanish/English) with a text by the curator, Octavio Zaya, another one by the well-known historicist and curator from Israel Tali Tamir, and the analysis on the work of every single artist, written by Or Gottlib, Drorit Gur-Arie, Joanna Lowry, Ruti Direktor, Ariella Azulay, Katerina Gregos and Roy Brand, among others, apart from some other biographic material and reproductions of the works exhibited.