Maya Zack

Alon Segev Gallery, Tel Aviv
Acquired from the above

Jerusalem Artists’ House, Rupture & Repair, Adi Prize for Jewish Expression in Art and Design, 2010, p. 39, illustrated in situ in the exhibition catalogue (another example exhibited)
Tel Aviv, Alon Segev Gallery, Living Room, 2010 (another example exhibited)
New York, The Jewish Museum, Maya Zack: Living Room, 2011 (another example exhibited)
Berlin, Jewish Musuem, Heimat Kunde: How German is it? 30 Artists' Notion of Home, 2011, p. 176, illustrated in the exhibition catalogue (another example exhibited)
Jerusalem, The Israel Museum: Magic Lantern: Recent Acquisitions in Contemporary Art, 2011-2012 (another example exhibited)
Paris, Ville Emerige, Pluriel: Regards sur l’Art Contemporain Israelien, 2012 (another example exhibited)
Tel Aviv, The Shpilman Institute for Photography, The Double Exposure Project, 2014 (another work from the series illustrated in the exhibition catalogue)

This work is in excellent condition. Not viewed out of frame.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

PROPERTY SOLD TO BENEFIT THE SHPILMAN INSTITUTE FOR PHOTOGRAPHY (Lots 38 - 48)

The SIP’s public research collection of photographs reflects the Institute’s profound interest in studying different realms of the photographic medium. The collection, numbering over 900 works, focuses on historical images, contemporary Israeli and international photography. Conceptually, the collection focuses on photography’s disengagement from traditional documentary approaches and towards the discovery of other modes of action in the artistic field. The Israeli collection features central works of Israel’s most prominent contemporary photographers, dating from the 1970s to recent years.

AN INTRODUCTION TO ISRAELI PHOTOGRAPHY by Gideon Ofrat

Perhaps, the most significant momentum in contemporary Israeli art pertains to the field of photography. Outstanding Photography departments in art academies and in leading museums, galleries dedicated to photography, photography prizes, ‘The Shpilman Photography Institute’ and many more have instigated in Israel what has long been apparent in the international art world: the golden age of photography. And thus, alongside valuable and bold documentary photography, mainly committed to the representation of grief and sorrow in the ‘Israeli condition’ given the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Micha Bar-Am, Pavel Wolberg, Miki Kratsman, Alex Levac, Gaston Itskovich and more), there was also the artistic photography which has begun to flourish, winning recognition and appreciation among the world’s most renowned museums and galleries. Simultaneous with the unprecedented pluralism taking on the post-modern artistic scene in Israel and worldwide, the practice of artistic photography has also reaffirmed a multitude of syntaxes of various artists. Indeed, even if one does not expect to encounter an “Israeli photographic substance“, most of the photographs on view here – the works of ten of Israel’s most important contemporary photographers –ratify a visual tension between trauma and fiction, with sediments of unease concealed in the depth of the artistic effort to convert the realistic into the simulated.

Maya Zack, born in Israel in 1976 and based in Tel Aviv, takes us into a different Israeli memory, in both space and time. In Rapture and Repair, her 2009 exhibition by the Adi Foundation at the Israel Museum, Zack presented her photographic installation Living Room, winning her first place. Through computer simulation, the artist recreated a typical Jewish house in Berlin of the 1930s, designed to be viewed with 3D glasses. The work was based on the memories of Jewish immigrants from Germany, in particular one Jewish man who left his parents’ home in Berlin in 1938. Some of these memories accompanied the exhibition in audio and writing. Similar to Kremer’s piece, this work also functions as a morbid setting, an empty moment frozen in time. Per the Jewish man’s testimony, there were very few Jewish characteristics (Jewish newspaper). The artist has added a Judenstern lamp hung from the ceiling, two candle sticks and Havdalah objects. Wounded walls may represent destruction, together with the dinner leftovers and even the newspaper and the porcelain statuette on the floor – all possible hints of the tenants' forced immediate evacuation. All these signs are almost hiding within the enveloping cultural impression (piano, library) of a progressive bourgeois and well to do Jewish-German family doing its utmost to integrate with the non-Jewish surrounding. Merging fictitious details with the true tragic Jewish history, Zack invites us to reflect upon the tension between testimony, memory and the visual embodiment of the past.

Other examples from this image are in the permanent collections of The Jewish Museum of Berlin and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.