Discount Artistic Encouragement Award
Discount Artistic Encouragement Award
The Discount Artistic Encouragement Award is awarded annually at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art to an Israeli artist. The recipient is selected by the Discount Bank’s Art Committee from among the artists whose work is scheduled to be exhibited at the Herzliya Museum that year. Committee members include Shulamit Nuss, in charge of the Discount Bank Collection; Gal Carmy Mor, head of Discount Bank’s Premium Division; Roni Gilat-Baharaff, managing director of Christie’s Israel; and curators Irith Hadar and Roni Cohen-Binyamini. The prize consists of a grant of NIS 40,000 for the artist to produce his or her exhibition at the Museum.
The Discount Award 2024
Image: Yoram Vidal
The recipient of the 2024 Discount Artistic Encouragement Award is Ruven Kuperman. The judges reasoned their award as follows: “Ruven Kuperman’s work, which is characterized by remarkable painterly virtuosity, gives expression to hybrid representations that blend together classical and contemporary culture, and East and West. In his recent works, Kuperman creates fantastic, dystopian worlds, based on a variety of sources, traditions and mythologies—to the point where the resulting image is of unclear origin. In his artistic endeavor, he manages to combine different concepts and styles to create rich and dream-like imaginary spaces that invite the viewer to indulge in prolonged viewing.”
Ruven Kuperman (b. 1964 in Moldova, lives and works in Tel Aviv) completed a bachelor’s degree in art and philosophy at the University of Haifa, and an MFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York. His work has featured in solo exhibitions throughout Israel, including at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2008); the Wilfrid Israel Museum of Asian Art and Studies, Kibbutz Hazorea (2016); RawArt Gallery, Tel Aviv (2018, 2020); the Artists’ House, Tel Aviv (2020); and the Artists’ Workshops, Tel Aviv (2022). Kuperman has also participated in group exhibitions, including at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2018); the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2006, 2016); the IV Biennale of Contemporary Art, Odessa (2015); the Petach Tikva Museum of Art (2016); the Bat Yam Museum of Art (2017); the Ashdod Art Museum (2019); and the Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art, Haifa (2023). He has received various prizes and grants, including the Ministry of Culture and Sport’s Creative Encouragement Award (2016); Anne and Ari Rosenblatt Prize for Visual Arts (2019); and the Ministry of Culture Award in the field of plastic arts (2021). He teaches at the NB Haifa School of Design and the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem.
Kuperman’s solo exhibition will be held in the Great Hall of the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art in April 2024, sponsored by the Discount Artistic Encouragement Award. The exhibition will present new works of his from 2021 to the present, including interrelated works of sculpture and painting. At the center of the exhibition will be a cluster of some 25 clay objects treated with color glazes, engravings, brushwork, and incisions. In front of it will be installed a large sculptural mural made entirely of multi-layered and transparent synthetic material, in hues of gray, whose shapes are derived from the shadows cast by the clay sculptures. In this way, the installation subverts the inherent physical relationship between the real object and its shadow, offering a new mode of material presence in space and its absence. In addition, two new works by Kuperman—large-scale acrylic and oil paintings on canvas— will be on view, as well as a series of paintings on dark paper stock that presents links and fusions of styles, cultures, and mythologies.
The Discount Award 2022
The artist Ben Hagari is the recipient of the 2022 Discount Artistic Encouragement Award at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art.
Excerpt from the jury’s reasoning: “Hagari’s creative endeavor offers a reflective look at the act of creation, with talent and originality. In each project, he re-examines the medium he has chosen from a historical perspective, with a novel visual interpretation, yet firmly tongue-in-cheek. Hagari’s ability to meticulously create an entire, hermetically-sealed world endows his protagonists with an inner validity, which complements his uncompromising ability to provide in his works a critique that is pertinent to our time. In the current project, Hagari combines his skills as an artist with his abilities as a lecturer and researcher. In an intricate act of creation and curation, his exhibition On Point explores the evolution of the moving graphic line (in drawing, printing, collage, animation, and more) over a century of creativity.”
Ben Hagari (b. 1981, Tel Aviv, lives and works in New York) holds a B.Ed. from Hamidrasha School of Art, Beit Berl College, Israel (2008) and an MFA from Columbia University, New York (2014). His work has been exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions at the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts (2016); Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv (2016); and Fundación Calosa, Mexico (2021). In addition, he has participated in group exhibitions at venues including The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; SculptureCenter, New York; High Line Art, New York; Whitechapel Gallery, London; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Krakow; and KIT, Düsseldorf.
Hagari is the recipient of several awards and fellowships, including the Israel Ministry of Culture Prize in Art (2011); the Foundation for Contemporary Art Grant (2021); the Chami Fruchter Award for an Emerging Video Artist (2016); and the New York State Council on the Arts Grant (2021). Hagari headed the Video Department at Hamidrasha School of Art, Beit Berl College (2009–12) and is currently teaching at Yale University, Connecticut and at the School of Visual Arts, New York.
The exhibition On Point is scheduled to open at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art in January 2023. In the exhibition, Hagari – as curator and artist – contemplates handmade moving images as subject, form, and worldview. The exhibition is the result of his ongoing research into the history and mechanisms of the moving image. It includes new video works, created by Hagari especially for this exhibition, alongside a display of historical pieces and contemporary works by artists from around the world.
Etchings, collages, engravings, movable books, silhouettes, animations, and video installations will be presented at the exhibition (which will encompass the entire upper level of the Museum). The exhibition will also feature works on paper by international artists from the collection of the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies at Columbia University, New York – including Sarah Sze, Kiki Smith, William Kentridge, Jasper Johns, Kara Walker, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Terry Winters, and David Altmejd, among others.
The exhibition will trace the animated line and the movement of the drawing hand as an act of magic. In J. Stuart Blackton’s The Enchanted Drawing, filmed in 1900 in Thomas Edison’s laboratory, a man draws various objects on paper that soon come to life as real. This film is considered the first animation sequence in the history of cinema.
The exhibition will feature the masterpiece book Automaton Theater by Lothar Meggendorfer (1847-1925), a pioneering German illustrator in the creation of movable books, which blur the boundaries between playacting and storytelling, between static and moving image, between 2D and 3D. In addition, a new film will be shown that takes an extreme close-up look at the mechanisms and characters in his books, and breathes life into the animated episodes. The exhibition will also feature Lotte Reiniger’s film Papageno (1935), a fantastic adaptation of Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute. The film was created using a unique technique developed by her, in which she cut out shadow puppets and moved them, frame by frame, to create silhouette animation.
The exhibition is titled after a new video work by Hagari, On Point, which follows the life of a single pencil from its manufacturing process at a pencil factory to its anthropomorphization. Through this obsolete object, the film observes the disappearance of handwriting and manual production, as they are replaced by new means in an increasingly digital world. This is a further extension of Hagari’s artistic practice, which dissolves the boundaries between reality and imagination; between theatrical illusion and an exposé of what happens behind the scenes and the many artificial devices – makeup, props, sets, and cinematic manipulations – used to conjure up wondrous, unique worlds.
The Discount Award 2020
Artist Hilla Toony Navok is the recipient of the 2020 Discount Artistic Encouragement Award at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art.
Excerpt from the jury’s reasoning: “Hilla Toony Navok’s works draw their inspiration from the material Israeli environment surrounding her. In her work familiar, readymade objects, and accordingly acute realism, are coupled with geometric abstraction. Contemporaneity and modernism are combined with great talent, encapsulating expressions of humor and critique of our time.”
Hilla Toony Navok, born in 1974 in Tel Aviv, pursues both drawing and sculpting. She holds a bachelor’s degree in design from WIZO Haifa, and a master’s degree in art from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. Her works have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at museums and galleries in Israel and abroad. A work by Navok is on permanent display at the New Train Terminal in Jerusalem (Navon Station). She is a recipient of the Rapaport Prize (2020); Minister of Culture Award and Encouragement of Creativity Award by the Ministry of Culture (2012, 2019); The Israel Museum’s Kolliner Award for a Young Israeli Artist (2018); and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art’s Givon Prize (2011), among others.
In her work, Navok deciphers the codes of Israeli architecture and design, tracing degraded forms of high modernism and abstraction in popular consumer products. Her works are marked by surprising and original sculptural use of common, everyday materials and objects, thereby revealing their latent qualities and offering new ways of looking at them.
A solo exhibition of Navok’s work will be on view in the Great Hall of the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art in February 2021, sponsored by the Discount Artistic Encouragement Award. At the heart of the exhibition will be a large kinetic installation that refers to the architectural properties of the space. Navok uses PVC sheets to create a sculptural-playful environment made up of structures that shift between opening and closing, alternately revealing and concealing their mechanisms of movement. The kinetic operation creates an “abstract drawing in space,” and transitions between matter in its raw state and a functioning structure, and between a complete image and a disassembled version of it.
The Discount Award 2019
Natalia Zourabova is the recipient of the 2019 Discount Artistic Encouragement Award at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art. According to the jury’s reasoning, “With captivating, colorful, and empathetic expressiveness, Zourabova’s realistic paintings offer wry commentary on the personal and social aspects of her life.”
Zourabova, born 1975, immigrated to Israel in 2004 from the former Soviet Union. She is a graduate of the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts, Moscow, and the Academy of Arts, Berlin. She is a member of the New Barbizon collective of painters, which aims to express social criticism by painting from life. In addition, she teaches art and takes place in socially oriented art projects. Her paintings have been presented in numerous one-person shows and group exhibitions in museums and galleries, in Israel and internationally.
A one-person show of Zourabova’s work will be on view at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art in September 2019, sponsored by the Discount Artistic Encouragement Award. At the heart of the exhibition will be a series of paintings depicting scenes from personal life of the artist, who lives with her daughter in an apartment in Jaffa. The images highlight her experience of both assimilation and rejection as she struggles to settle in Israel. The exhibition will feature the artist’s sketches and sculptures from recent years, along with new paintings, on public view for the first time.
The Discount Award 2018
The inaugural recipient is the artist Haimi Fenichel, and his exhibition will open at the Museum in December 2018.
In March 2018 the inaugural award ceremony was held at the Museum. The event included the launch of a book presenting the Discount Bank’s Israeli art collection, edited by the renowned curator Yona Fischer. Present at the event were former bank directors, CEO Ms. Lilach Asher-Tupilski, Mr. Leon Recanati, collection manager Ms. Shulamit Nuss, and members of the bank’s artistic committee: Chairman Yona Fischer, Ms. Roni Gilat-Baharaff, and curators Ms. Irith Hadar and Ms.Roni Cohen-Binyamini. Also present were Mayor of Herzliya, Moshe Fadlon; Yehuda Ben Ezra, Director General of Herzliya Municipality; and the Museum’s Director, Dr. Aya Lurie.
