An exhibition of award recipients presents a curatorial challenge, since the participants are a given and have no common denominator save the award. However, it offers an opportunity of engaging in dialogue and collaboration with the artists, giving expression to their distinctive qualities. Each work on view proposes a unique gaze – intuitive, critical, doubtful, contemplative, or questioning – turned inwards, to the private sphere, or outwards, to the common, public sphere. The exhibition includes works that engage with issues such as existence versus death, or impermanence versus stagnation; works that explore the place of the artist in society or the crises of local landscape and life; as well as works that pursue cultural tendencies, representational modes, and conceptual or formal aspects of art.

Most of the artists have chosen to present new works made over the past year. A few have even produced works especially for the exhibition. Some present works in a medium not usually identified with their artistic production, others offer a first, experimental glimpse of a work in progress, and yet others have produced site-specific works. Avoiding disciplinary distinctions between art, craft, and design, the exhibition allows for dynamic encounters between abstract and applied art, design and visual imagery, practice and aesthetics.

The exhibition features an extensive presentation of works by Danny Kerman, recipient of the Life Achievement Award. Kerman is one of the foremost illustrators in Israel, and his work includes many of Israel’s canonical books. This is also an opportunity to present his artistic endeavor from less familiar angles, demonstrating the development of his unique, sharply humorous style.

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