M USEUM OF C ONTEMPORARY A RT, SAN D IEGO The San Diego presentation of Adi Nes: M AY 28–JULY 14, 2002 Photographs is made possible by contributions from Joyce and Ted Strauss and by the Garfield Family Foundation. Additional support comes from the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, and the California Arts Council. ADI NES PHOTOGRAPHS M USEUM OF C ONTEMPORARY P HOTOGRAPHY, The Chicago presentation of Adi Nes is C OLUMBIA C OLLEGE C HICAGO, supported in part by grants from the S EPTEMBER 27-DECEMBER 21, 2002 Illinois Art Council, a state agency, and the ational Endowment for the Arts; and the Consulate General of Israel, Chicago. BIBLIOGRAPHY Adi Nes Photography in Israel: A changing View, Monographic Catalogues 2 6 Born 1966, Israel Margolis Gallery, Houston Adi Nes: Recent Photographs. exh. cat. Tel Aviv: Tel 1 4 5 Lives and works in Tel Aviv Exposure: Recent Acquisitions from the Aviv Museum of Art, 2001. 3 7 Education Doron Sebbag Art Collection, O.R.S. Ltd., Adi Nes. exh. cat. Tel Aviv: Dvir Gallery, 2000. 10 13 14 Tel Aviv Museum of Art* 8 9 12 1989– Department of Photography, Bezalel Selected Articles in English 11 1992 Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem From Mirror to Memory: One Hundred Dempsey, Judy. ‘Seeing Through the Image.’ Years of Photography in the Land of Awards and Scholarships Financial Times (March 11–12, 2000), pp. 9. Israel, Mané-Katz Museum, Haifa, 1. Untitled, 2000, 39 3/8 x 49 1/4 in. (100 x 125 cm.) 2000 The Nathan Gottesdiener Foundation Grushkin, Daniel. ‘Telling It in Gat.’ The Jerusalem Israel (traveled)* 1 1 Israeli Art Prize, Tel Aviv Museum of Art Report 12, no. 3 (June 4, 2001), pp. 40–41. 2. Untitled, 1999, 35 /2 x 35 /2 in. (90 x 90 cm.) 1999 Recipients of the 1999 Minister of Karpel, Dalia. ‘Man’s Work.’ Ha’aretz Magazine 3. Untitled, 1995, 35 1/2 x 35 1/2 in. (90 x 90 cm.) 1999 Education, Culture & Sport Minister’s Science,Culture and Sport Prize, Israel (April 6, 2001), pp. 20–23. 1 2 Prize for Artists in the Visual Arts, Jerusalem Painters and Sculptors Association, Tel Aviv 4. Untitled, 2000, 73 x 92 / in. (185 x 235 cm.) Tzur, Uzi. ‘Renaissance Men.’ Ha’aretz Magazine 5. Untitled, 2000, 39 3/8 x 49 1/4 in. (100 x 125 cm.) 1993 Sandra Jacobs’ Anglo-Israeli Photographic Old and New: Recent Acquisitions in (April 6, 2001), p. 19. 1 1 Awards Project Scholarship, Department of Photography, Israel Museum, Jerusalem. 6. Untitled, 1999, 23 /2 x 35 /2 in. (60 x 90 cm.) Plastic Arts, Cultural Office, Jerusalem 1 1 1998 After Rabin: new Art from Israel, Collections: 7. Untitled, 1999, 23 /2 x 35 /2 in. (60 x 90 cm.) Solo Exhibitions The Jewish Museum, New York* Israel Museum, Jerusalem 8. Untitled, 2000, 39 3/8 x 39 3/8 in. (100 x 100 cm.) 2001 Recent Photographs, Tel Aviv Museum of Art* 3 1 Fou de roi, Nîmes, France The Tel Aviv Museum of Art 9. Untitled, 2000, 39 /8 x 49 /4 in. (100 x 125 cm.) The Jewish Museum, New York 2000 Adi Nes: Photographs, Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv* Bamot—Art from Israel, Jüdisches 10. Untitled, 1998, 35 1/2 x 35 1/2 in. (90 x 90 cm.) Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego 1998 The Soldiers, Milkweg Gallery, Amsterdam Museum der Stadt Wien, Vienna* 1 1 Various Private Collections in Israel & abroad 11. Untitled, 1996, 35 /2 x 35 /2 in. (90 x 90 cm.) 1996 First Act, Photography Department Blanche Kol Hakavod, Janco Dada Museum, Eim 12. Untitled, 2000 39 3/8 x 39 3/8 in. (100 x 100 cm.) and Romi Shapira Gallery, Bezalel Academy Hod, Israel* 13. Untitled, 1999 35 1/2 x 35 1/2 in. (90 x 90 cm.) of Art and Design,Jerusalem Condition Report: Photography in Israel Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego 1 1 14. Untitled, 1999 23 /2 x35 /2 in. (60 x 90 cm.) Selected Group Exhibitions Today, Israel Museum, Jerusalem.* 700 Prospect Street 2002 Revelation: Representations of Christ in Capturing Reality: 19 Israeli and Palestinian La Jolla, California 92037 Photograpy, Hotel de Sully, Paris, and Israel Photographers, Tennessee State Museum, (858) 454–3541 © 2002 by the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. All rights reserved. Museum, Jerusalem* No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means without written Nashville* permission of the publisher. The copyrights to the works of art in this book 2001 Aspiration: Toward the Future in the Serial Number, Memorial Center, Kiryat Museum of Contemporary Photography, are retained by the artists, their heirs, successors, and assigns. Middle East—11 Israeli and Palestinian Tivon, Israel, and Municipal Gallery, Columbia College, Chicago Artists, Riffe Gallery, Columbus, Ohio Rehovot, Israel 600 SouthMichigan Avenue, (traveled)* 1996 Israeli Diary, Tel Aviv Cinematheque Chicago, Illinois 60605 (312) 663-5554 Re-Thinking: Photographs and Video 1994 90-70-90, Tel Aviv Museum of Art from Israel, IFA Gallery Bonn, Germany Export Surplus, Bograshov Gallery, Tel Aviv (traveled)* 1993 Jewish Gay Life, Akehurst Gallery, London, 2000 Time Frame: A Century of Photography in and Artist House Gallery, Jerusalem the Land of Israel, Israel Museum, Jerusalem. * Adi Nes and Naomi Talisman, Camera La repubblica dell’arte—Israel, Centro Obscura School of Art Gallery, Tel Aviv Arte Contemporanea, Palazzo Delle Papesse, Siena, Italy. * indicates the exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue DESIGNED BY BURRITT DESIGN Adi Nes makes large-scale color staged photographs charged with a slyly audacious theatricality, Israeli Artist symbolism, and sexuality that both surprises and informs. Using hired models and teams of assistants, he carefully constructs dramatic scenes to be frozen by the camera's shutter. Set in actual locations, Nes' images depict simultaneously inhabit significant moments no longer a hardscrabble land of idealistic commonplace subjects from contemporary life and displace his preoccupations into Zionists; it was a booming, cosmopolitan in his country: soldiers on military exercises, aestheticized realms. Because they focus nation with all the attendant problems. boys in rough-edged housing projects, women primarily on men, the photographs enable Nes Increasingly, its citizens asked whether the and children enacting street dramas. Although to consider the objects of his desire as well as country was, as its founders believed, a good they employ real people, places, and themes, connect himself with connoisseurs of the male kid in a bad neighborhood or a bully cruelly Nes' photographs are not strictly naturalistic. form ranging from Michelangelo to Robert repressing the Palestinians. Young artists like From scouting locations to providing costumes Mapplethorpe. Because they frame daily life in Nir Hod and musicians like Aviv Geffen openly and props, to renting lighting equipment and Israel in mythological or art-historical contexts, expressed undercurrents of dissent. They wind machines, Nes leaves no elements of his the works enable the artist to look for abiding questioned mandatory military service as well compositions to chance. He carefully creates a truths in a troubled present. as conventional gender roles—something heightened realism that alchemically Nes’ first staged photographs, the Soldiers shocking in a place where adolescent transforms everyday life in Israel. Series, considers the role of the army in Israel. existential angst traditionally took a back seat Mythology and art history inspire many of The powerful Israeli Defense Force is central to to patriotic duty. The 1995 assassination of Nes’ photographs. Among his sources are the the country’s self-image, and the role you play stories of biblical figures and Greek and Roman in it is crucial to your social standing and gods, paintings by Leonardo da Vinci and career opportunities. Like all Israeli men and Caravaggio, and historic photographs women, Nes was required to serve in the documenting the founding of Israel. Like military, and he landed a prestigious tableaux vivants, in which actors reenact the assignment as an air traffic controller at a static compositions of famous paintings or desert airbase. However, he found himself events, Nes photographs allow him to collapse serving at pivotal periods in his own life and ancient and modern eras as well as personal the life of Israel. He was a young gay man in and cultural allegories. The images allow him his country’s most macho institution and a to consider his existence as a gay man and an soldier for a nation engaged in a process of Israeli. “I am interested in the gap that exists self-examination. between objective reality, and the reality that During the 1990s, as Israel approached its exists in my mind,” he says. Mixing artifice fiftieth anniversary, a new skepticism toward and real life, Nes’ work allows him to its cultural legends emerged. The country was Untitled, 1996, 90 x 90 cm. challenges, self-sacrifice for the contemporaries by using raffish peasants as Nes’ version, however, the Star of David banner homeland. It’s a form of power models for religious scenes are inspirations for a is conspicuously absent, suggesting a vacuum that is meant to show itself and not group of three photographs of soldiers sleeping of ideals. Another image, based on a famous necessarily to protect the society.”1 on busses. Are these men, sprawled vulnerably Life Magazine cover image of soldier Yossi Ben- An untitled image from 1995 across each other in slanted, golden sunlight Hanan celebrating victory in the 1967 Six-Day (Nes never gives his photographs lambs to the slaughter, or might they War by brandishing his assault rifle while titles) emblematizes the artist’s themselves harm innocents? And Leonardo da splashing in the Suez Canal.