Time of the World
Groundwater
Exhale And Inhale
“Long Way Home”
“Breathing Song” at Haifa Museum
The Remaining Tree
Tel Aviv-Yafo City Hall – Beit Hair
Vouge Runway
Toto Restaurant
Train Stations Art Project
The invention of painting: how did you do it?
Living Room – Brooklyn
“Passages Materializes”
Steinway New York Showroom
Group Exhibition: (Ta)Asiya – (In-dustry) at Zuzu GalleryMiriam Cabessa’s painting encapsulates the gallery. Coming down from the pointed ceiling to the walls and floor, pouring down and spreading boundlessly in every direction. Blackening and marking, caressing and encompassing, sealing every crack in the wall. Coating the whiteness of the gallery with vibrating waves. An illusion is created when the space surrounding the viewer becomes a painting, when imaginary and reality combine. It is like stepping into the painting, drawn into the two-dimensional illusion. Loosing sense of space. Where it is sunken, where it protrudes, swept into an experience the mind finds hard to process.
The technique Cabessa uses resists the paint, the rich appliance of color and all intentions to become a shape of specific image. She spreads diluted paint with thick sponges, letting her breath dictate her movement. It is a slow and repetitive process, changing by the pressure applied, the angle of her body and the characteristics of the surface. The body becomes a tool with limited control. Each breath-swipe leaves surprising traces, changing from moment to moment. It feels organic, almost alive. It is important for Cabessa to stay connected, in stillness, not planning her movement or trying to create an image, not aiming for a specific result. She does not work with a set of rules or layout, like she once did. The work leads her as she tries not to get in its way. She becomes her own worker. Painted with the same technique as the walls, ceiling and floor is a tree. Standing bare and alone in the middle of the gallery. It is planted in a plastic bucket of paint, branches spreading out to its sides. It feels deserted, resonating a deep sense of loneliness. The whole space surrounding the tree unfolds around it, comes into being by its presence.
The gallery was once the communal dining room of the kibbutz, built in 1956 and imported from Germany. In those years Swedish shacks were imported as a quick solution for young and growing settlements. It is an elongated building with a pointed ceiling, nothing like the local flat-roofed stone Arabic houses found here. For Cabessa it resembled a church, a place of matter and spirit, distanced from the bustling world outside, like a little bubble in time. The dining room was the cultural and social center of the kibbutz, and it became one of its symbols. Functioning as much more than a room for dining, it became a place for discussions, lectures, celebrations and holidays, even dancing. A central place in the community. It was a secular church of such. Formally and morally it is the most prominent building in the kibbutz, it’s location also symbolizing its status. The group was a replacement for families left in the golah, social ideas replaced religion, and the dining room replaced the synagogue. Dining together had a special social values of solidarity and brotherhood, a symbol of the community.
The title of the exhibition “Time of the World” is a quote from a poem by BiaIlik. The poem leaves the reader with a strong impression of a long life passing, connecting time and space. Space is the world and it is constructed through never-ending time. Just as the painting spills down from the ceiling to the floor, the slow Sisyphean work produces a different experience of time. It becomes a graph of its passage, a gently vibrating seismograph. The viewer is encapsulated by the painting, caught up and separated from the normal pass of time. It is now slow and meditative. Time of breathing. The church like shape of the gallery is now covered in black, reminding us of charred ashes. The fires in Australia and those here in the Gaza envelope trickle into the work. One can almost smell smoke in the air as the outside world merges with the one inside. Cabessa’s painting expands into the world, blends in with it and seeps back into the gallery. All becomes one.
אוצרת: רוית הררי
2020 ,1-6 .מס עיגולים
שמן על פשתן
מרים כבסה מזוהה מזה שנים עם ציורי גוף חושניים וחומריים. היא מתפלשת בצבע, מותירה בו סימני משיכת אצבעות, ידיים או חפצים שונים וכמעט שאינה משתמשת במברשות. סדרת עבודות חדשה זו נוצרה תוך הליכה מתמשכת במעגלים סביב הבד, כשגופה מחובר אל טבור הציור כאל ציר מרכזי שסביבו מתחוללת התנועה. בעוד שציוריה הקודמים מתאפיינים
במערבולות צבע גועשות, פרי תנועת גוף דינאמית, הציורים המעגליים מייצרים בראש ובראשונה מקום של שקט ומצב תודעתי של התרוקנות ושל רוגע.
פעולת הסיבוב סביב הציור מעלה על הדעת את ריקודם המסתחרר של הסופים, המבקשים להגיע דרך המחול המעגלי לתחושת התעלות אקסטטית ולקשר עם האל. בדומה, ההליכה במעגלים סביב הציור יוצרת תחושת סחרחורת ואיבוד אוריינטציה, ורק הציור משמש לה כנקודת היאחזות ועוגן להתמצאות. נדמה כי השילוב בין הדימוי המעגלי הסימבולי לבין פעולתה הפיזית המדידטטיבית של כבסה יוצר על הבד מקום מטאפיזי ורוחני, שבו אדוות תכולות של צבע נעות פנימה והחוצה בתנועה אינסופית.
העבודה הנוכחית מתייחסת למרווח שבין השאיפה לנשיפה, בין הקיר לבד הציור. זהו רטט מתמשך, הנע בין האיכות הקורנת של הזהב לעומקיו החשוכים של השחור. בראשית שנת 2019 שהתה כבסה בחלל מגורים זמני בברוקלין וציירה על קירותיו ועל רהיטיו במקצב נשימותיה. לדבריה: “קצב הנשימה שלי קבע את קצב הציור. האוויר, שנכנס לגוף ומילא את החלל שבתוכי, ננשף והתערבב עם החלל שמחוצה לי. המחווה הציורית/גופנית שלי שהיא, בעיקרון, אינסופית, מצוירת על העולם, יוצרת עירוב תחומים, ביטול גבולות, איחוד של האשליה והממשות”.
In the voyage story Miriam recounts, the painting materials, oil colors and surface, uncover the dialog between fumbling in the dark and knowledge, loneliness and connection, reality and wonder.
Miriam’s contact with matter creates a movement that settles into the surface and emerges again toward the viewer at the moment of looking. The body is the instrument that carries her (and us) to the sublime, and the image takes us back to the body.
Her new paintings, a magnificent array of riddles, tell a story about creating something out of nothing and about infinity meeting borders. On the seamline between the sensual and the cyborg-like, Miriam hides more than she reveals, stripping us of our knowledge and uncovers herself without being exposed.
Miriam’s works occur at the encounter of emotion’s volcanic eruption with her complete control of matter. Her masterful skill with painting’s utilities, her body, or her work tools (never paintbrushes) and the wild release of her passions and desires, reveal a relationship that she allows us to witness, like voyeurs, and through it, discover something about ourselves.
Miriam Cabessa challenges the boundaries of painting, while maintaining a close affinity to the tradition of the medium. Appearing machine-made, her paintings result from meticulous manual painting in oil paints, where the artist’s body functions as a brush, and her breaths create the images.
Holding a piece of cloth dipped in paint, Cabessa presses her hands to the wall and keeps still. In a long, meditative act whose essence is the cessation of movement, the resulting painting ostensibly creates itself by the involuntary movements of the hands: when they move, the paint is spread, and when they stop, a dark patch is created. It is the artist’s breaths that move her body and create a painting that is all inhaling and exhaling, movement and arrest, adding and subtracting paint. In fact, Cabessa does not paint with her hands only, because her entire body, including its internal organs and the innermost physical and mental processes, functions as an
active partner in the creative process.
In the current exhibition, Cabessa applies the paint to the museum walls, creating a painting that unites with the space containing it and defines its boundaries. The space created by Cabessa is a direct expression of her body, and as such, it is also a space of life – a space generated by a vital, changing and moving body. Viewers are invited to immerse themselves in this panoramic body-painting, and in the process to stop and observe what is happening inside them.
Participating artists: Absalon, Sharon Azagi, Christian Boltanski, Louise Bourgeois, Miriam Cabessa, Lilach Chitayat, Sophie Dupont, Regina José Galindo, Gideon Gechtman, Douglas Gordon, Inbal Hoffman, Dikla Moskovich, Avi Sabah, Alma Shneor, Dor Zlekha Levy.
New exhibition at Haifa Museum
Thursday, 09.02.23, until Sunday 25.6.23
Curator: Dr. Kobi Ben-Meir
Miriam Cabessa’s series of works documents an artistic process that occurred during her
stay at the Carmel Forest Resort as part of the AFAR (Art Forest Residency) program,
which hosts Israeli artists while they work on a creative project.
Cabessa has been inspired by the thriving Camel Forests area, particularly the lone tree that
survived the fire that devastated the Carmel Forest several years ago. Her physical intervention in the tree’s environment, which took the form of an almost ritualistic fusion, was carried out with the help of natural pigments that she scattered in earthen channels.
She then dipped papers and fabrics in the pigments to create her artwork, which was photographed by Adi Tarkay. This process is part of a renewed examination of the notion of landscapes, nature, and colors that can be found throughout Israel.
Cabessa’s work was created in the spirit of the 1970s Land Art movement. Her works reflect the old concept with a contemporary, digital eye. Land Art introduced culture to nature, exploring the tension created between nature’s perfection and the manmade, essentially political quality of art and culture.
At a second glance, Cabessa’s work represents a metaphysical connection between her body and the ravaged natural landscape, as well as a parallel thought that the Resort serves as an oasis of relaxation and recreation for its guests.
Photography: Adi Tarkay, Leica Monochrom and Hasselblad Medium Format cameras.
Curator: Sharon Toval
Hebrew Editor: Ester Shalev
כבסה מציגה את “גחלים לוחשות”, עבודה ברוחב שישה מטרים ובגובה שני מטרים עשויה מאבקת זהב על פשתן. זה ציור מונומנטלי מהמם חושים: הדפוס הגיאומטרי משתלב היטב בבית העיר ובמסורת שלצורך העניין נכנה גברית, של עבודות קיר בעלות הוד אוטופיסטי שקישטו מבפנים או מבחוץ מבני ציבור בערים ובקיבוצים. החומריות והצבעים מתמירים את הסבר החמור (והמלהיב כשלעצמו) של המסורת המודרניסטית הזו לדרגה מיסטית. כמו קרוון, כבסה מפיחה שאר רוח קסום בחולין התל-אביבי האהוב ומבצעת מהפכה ללא שפיכות דמים; במסגרתה ממשיך החלל הכה-סמלי של העיר הלבנה להיות נוכח, ובה־בעת הציור משמש כשער שנפער בלחש-כשף ודרכו אנו כאילו פוסעים אל מקדש הסוגד לשמונה אלות המופיעות בכתב העת/פנזין “קמה”, שגיליונו הראשון והיפהפה הושק עם פתיחת התערוכה הזאת.
הציור של כבסה (ו”צמרמורת”, המיצב שמתחתיו) ממוקמים כך שהם משמשים כלב התערוכה, ארון הקודש שלה, החוכמה העתיקה שלוחשת לה, האינטליגנציה המלאכותית הנדיבה שמתחזקת אותה. בתווך בין כבסה לקרוון מתאפשר הטווח של שאר המציגות.
Lia Kes has laid the foundation for her minimalist label Kes from her namesake boutique on the Upper West Side. And so it made poetic (and commercial) sense for her to present her Fall 2018 collection on a cast of her own eclectic clientele: a beautifully diverse group of women, who ranged in age from 17 to 60 and grounded the clothes by wearing them as they would (and do!) in the real world.
It began with the reconsideration of her artistic roots. “It was really Miriam Cabessa,” Kes explained, pointing to the Slow Action Israeli painter who had taught her at Shenkar design school in Tel Aviv. Looking back, she realized their work maintained common visual and narrative themes. “And it was about women’s empowerment and finding strength through art and expression,” she added. Their collaboration resulted in a fashion show–cum–live art performance. A white canvas wall stood as the backdrop with black paint smeared across it in abstract brush strokes. Piles of dark gold-green powder were dusted onto the floor; one by one, the models stepped through it, tracking the pigment along a stretch of white canvas to capture the moment.
Lorna Simpson’s daughter, Zora Casebere, opened the show in a black shearling coat and dusty rose slip, her stunning cloud of curls floating behind (she’d recently stepped into Kes on a whim and been recruited). Each woman infused the collection’s soft wools and asymmetric cut silks with an authenticity that was refreshing. “I wanted to explore different shades of black this season,” Kes said. There was a good range of depth in her use of textures: A knotted silk trench compared to a chunky wool sweater, ripped across the chest and shoulder to fall away from the body. There was also a very pretty bias-cut number, organically dyed per the Kes m.o. to resemble cracked marble with bits of green and pink ripple. As a presentation, it did much to bring Kes’s world into focus, raising the bar for next season.
Toto restaurant shines in Tel Aviv’s up-scaled and lavish culinary scene.
Train stations are a world in motion: people coming and going, trains barreling in and out, Constantly-changing digital screens, the urban landscape continually in flux. For the individual person, travel symbolizes a transition among worlds, experiences and sentiments. This is yet another manifestation of the zeitgeist, which is pervaded by frantic motion, rapid
transitions.
Art often deals with the element of motion and change as it refers to nature, civilization and the human soul. In this exhibition, which examines this concept through a variety of artistic forms of expression, highlights the tension between cyclic, formulaic motion and movements reflecting breach of boundaries and free expression – primarily through images related to the human body. Just like contemporary techno-digital culture, the human spirit is constantly in motion, moving within a multidimensional, dynamic, unstable existence, albeit a continually-regenerating and surprising existence.
The exhibition “Reflections on Space and Time”; is on show in 2022 at three train stations: Sderot, Tel Aviv-Hashalom and Haifa-Merkaz Hashmona. This is the third and final exhibition in this series linking between the experiential world of train stations and the world of contemporary Israeli art.
The exhibition The Invention of Painting features paintings that foil attempts to decipher how they were made. Their making remains a mystery to the viewer, who while looking at them, struggles or fails completely to “recreate” how they were made in his or her mind. The paintings are imbued with the magic of enigma and mystery that seem to have been lost. Painting is essentially a traditional craft, but nevertheless, one that can be invented again and again. The need for the invention of painting at this time is more urgent than ever.
“Living Room” is a temporary painting installation that took over the living room of an old Brooklyn apartment in a 100-year-old building.
The piece took eight full days to complete. Cabessa used the vibration of her own breath to dictate the rhythm of her brushstrokes. The painting gesture is usually associated with fast and intuitive movements. In this piece, it become the result of a very slow and careful observation of the breath.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Me and you.
Between the 4th and the 7th of January 2019, Cabessa invited visitors to experience the Living Room in person.
The space re-opened to the public, by appointment only, from March 1st to March 11th, 2019.
כבסה מונעת על-ידי תחושת שחרור שאמורה להוליד תוצר של הפתעה וחופש אך באופן פרדוקסלי כמעט, הציור המוגמר מוכיח שהיא מצליחה לגייס את הכלים כבמטה קסם או כישוף וממשמעת אותם להתמסר לחזיונותיה. גילי סיטון על תערוכתה של מרים כבסה בגלריה הראל, “מעברים מומחשים”
ב 17 השנים האחרונות נעה מרים כבסה על קו תל-אביב–ניו-יורק. בתערוכת הדפסי מונוטייפ חדשה שמוצגת בגלריה הראל בתל-אביב היא שבה לנופי ילדותה שעל שפת הכינרת. ההדפסים משחזרים דימויים של טבע; מים, שמים, אדמה בוצית וצמחייה משתרגים ומתמזגים זה בזה בשכבות צבע דלילות ופיגמנטים בגוונים כחולים כסופים ואדמומיות נחושתית.
Group Exhibition: (Ta)Asiya – (In-dustry)
The three bodies of work presented by Miriam Cabessa in the exhibition were
created during different periods, using diverse mediums.
– In her paintings, Cabessa creates a simultaneous event of bodily movement and painting. In a physical and direct technique, she uses her hands, body and various tools to create fields of paint and pigment on the painting’s platform. At the end of the process, traces and signs of the movement remain on the art works. The direct act reveals and covers, dances and moves at differing rhythms. As a result, freshness
and crisp colors and imagery are present in the work. The series of paintings in the exhibition was created using an iron.
– The video work ‘Night Shift at the Museum’ documents from above, in real time, a painting act executed in cooperation with actors. In the work, which lasts for several hours, Cabessa follows and reacts, through painting, to the interactions and improvisations between the actors.
– For the exhibition (Ta)Asiya (In-dustry), Cabessa created a work that reacts directly to Zuzu Gallery’s location in a tractor factory. Cabessa casted plaster in the tire marks in the factory’s heavy machinery area. The resulting objects look like archeological artifacts on display.