TEL AVIV.- The exhibition comprises 159 photos, all new, in various formats, taken since 2007 in various places around the world—Tel Aviv, Berlin, Cologne, Havana, Paris, Brussels, Rome, Beijing, Stockholm—in the course of daily life. The photos of—landscapes, buildings, spaces, objects, people—are a manifestation of being in front of a thing, the fundamental things that form the infrastructure of human environment. Precise and thoughtful, they are articulated in classical formal language, both pictorial and emotional; their accumulation generates a general conceptual model of a story of life and of the world. A space time continuum composed of light exposes pinnacles of encounters, of physical contact, of seeing and understanding, of the object as such and of its relative position vis-à-vis other things. The direct, mundane gaze explores an event which is a temporal, ideal and sublime. Together, the fragments of reality depicted create a story, offering a model of a renewed encounter with both natural and cultural elements – an encounter of values and of the senses, encompassing personal, social and political aspects.

The exhibition is on view from February 24 2011 through June 4, 2011 at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

Space in Breger’s works – unlike the space photography is expected to reflect does not seek to document a place, and yet it steers clear of any effects that would demonstrate it as “other” or “abstract”; first and foremost, this space traces movement in the world, at times capturing a clear image, sharply seen, in a practical, almost formalistic structural composition. Arrays of contrasting light and darkness, of rectangular forms that turn into sources of luminosity, of road and dark tunnel imagery, imbue the works with symbolist and romantic undertones, even with spiritual connotations. In this hybridization of symbolism and formalism or of romanticism and rationalism, however, the former is always subjugated to the latter, contingent upon it, present as a mental possibility that has no corroboration or actual hold on reality. One of the most unmistakable characteristics of Breger’s photography is the ability to extract from the world elements that are experienced as fundamental without being encumbered by excessive symbolism.

Yossi Breger (b. France, 1960), recipient of the 1996 Gottesdiener Foundation Israeli Art Prize, is a senior lecturer in the MFA Program and the Department of Photography at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem. He headed the Department of Photography from 2000 to 2006.