Alchemical Encounter

“Art, such a spiritual goddess in appearance, required so many petty
things! One needed a roof over one’s head, and tools, woods, clay, colors, gold, effort and patience.”
— Hermann Hesse

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Art is typically perceived as a transcendent, almost effortless goddess, but this distilled manifestation requires persistent and tireless labor. Usually, this effort is not evident in the artwork, which does not disclose the repeated trials and experiments that take place in the artist’s studio on the path to the sublime outcome, and includes many unsuccessful
attempts that never come to fruition.

The tireless work and the use of the studio as a laboratory are the modus operandi of alchemy, the “science” that sought to create new matter through the chemical or formal transmutation of existing substances. Alchemy also strove to find the “philosopher’s stone”: an elixir of life that will grant immortality and cure every disease.

Alchemical Encounter brings together four creatives who have known each other for many years, and now combine their voices, worlds, and talents into one project for the first time. The sculptors Katya Izabel Filmus and Haimi Fenichel, and I all graduated from the same class at Bezalel’s Ceramics and Glass Department. We were joined by Sharon Keren, a trailblazing artist and teacher whom we had the privilege of
studying under.

The three participating artists use the studio as if it were a laboratory: they explore their materials through and through, both on a conceptual level – such as preservation, memory, urbanism, and the value of the artistic object, and on a material level – concrete, glass, wood, etc. All three know the material they work with inside out, pushing its boundaries, and deconstructing it, using their own “elixir” to create metamorphosing artworks: sand becomes “gravel sacks” in Fenichel’s work; machines become radical theater in the performances of Zik Group, of which Keren is a founding member; and wax candles become glass bricks in Filmus’s works. All three concoct their ideas in the studio, finding ways to bring them to life as an artwork in transformative and research-based processes, which are alchemical at their core.

And so, we could argue that artists are our time’s alchemists, formulating and dreaming up all kinds of creations. The moment they manage to decipher and control their materials holds the potential to conjure the transformation that turns a base substance into gold, an object of
cultural value, which sometimes gains immortality and spiritual value.

The exhibition highlights the magic and alchemy intrinsic to art making and the curatorial act: mixing different materials and combining them into one transformed substance.

Special thanks to Zik Group and to Dr. Osnat Zukerman Rechter

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Artists: Katya Izabel Filmus | Haimi Fenichel | Sharon Keren

Curator: Ma’ayan Israeli