Beyond Freshpaint with Art Curator Masha Malakh. Part 2: Art Projects
DI Catalogue and I, Masha Malakh, continue our series of articles following the Freshpaint exhibition. Moving from the Greenhouse of young artists, we now venture into the realm of curated projects and gallery spaces — places where ideas take shape and transform into captivating exhibitions. This year, three projects particularly stood out.
- “Cartography of Dreams” – Lena Guberman and Lena Revenko (Curator: Limor Margulis)
Lena Guberman and Lena Revenko, artists from Belarus and graduates of the Visual Communications Department at the Bezalel Academy, have joined forces in a delicate, poetic exhibition exploring inner landscapes — the spaces of dreams and memory. Their work aims to visualize elusive emotional states, giving form to the ephemeral.
Lena Guberman, known for her delicate sculptures from the 2023 fair’s Greenhouse, returns in a curated project with her new series «Breadcrumb Trail» — a collection of figurines of girls crawling in a circle. These works continue her distinctive artistic language, where painting and sculpture exist on the edge — two-dimensional and three-dimensional images complement and enrich each other like text and illustration in a book. Her sculptures, both vulnerable and strong, balance between reality and fiction, exploring themes of memory, femininity, and intergenerational connections.
Lena Revenko creates vibrant, rich worlds inhabited by friendly monsters, animals, and humans that together reveal complex facets of the human soul. Inspired by childhood memories, myths, and Oriental miniature painting, she discovered miniature art during her travels in India and encountered the image of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King from classical Chinese literature, in China — a figure that frequently appears in her works. She works on pages of old books collected from various countries, creating visual dialogues between languages and cultures.
2. «The Heaviness of Time» Ayala Tzur and Tamar Green (Curator: Michal Krasny)
The exhibition brings together porcelain objects with hand embroidery by Ayala Tzur and miniature houses by Tamar Green. Both artists create intimate, almost whispering spaces — filled with silence, the breath of memory, and fragility that invites touch yet fears disruption of its delicate balance.
Tamar Green works in a monochromatic, subdued palette. Her small canvases are not just exterior but states, structures of feelings. Her miniature houses serve as both architecture and self-portrait, external and internal. In her interpretation, the house becomes a multifaceted image — both a fortress and a vulnerable space where peace coexists with emptiness and solitude.
Ayala Tzur employs porcelain, embroidery, and lace — materials that evoke an almost physical desire to touch. Yet, viewers intuitively sense that this beauty is too delicate to withstand contact. Her objects engage in a dialogue with natural forms, life cycles, and craft traditions. The finest details and combinations — antique patterns, botanical motifs, hand-embroidered fabrics — create a sense of magic. Tzur unites contradictions: fragility and strength, the softness of textiles and the stability of clay. Her works speak of hidden inner strength and memory frozen in material.
3. «חושנשי» (intimate – author’s note). The images of these four artists, presented in this small yet poignant exhibition, intersect with themes of motherhood, female strength, and the transmission of traditions.
Rubin PantoFaru reinterprets her mother’s ceramic sculptures through glass, creating works filled with personal memory and light.
Olya Brener presents glass rabbits — symbols of vulnerability and protection.
Noa Lamdan Hakeiny works with the acorn image as a metaphor for germination and potential.
Einav Barness Elias presents glass nesting dolls — an archetypal representation of the multilayered nature of female experience.
Follow the links and addresses below to discover where you can find these works today — for inspiration, personal acquisition, or inclusion in your projects:
https://www.lenarevenko.com/works/
https://www.ayalatzur.com/my-works
Stay tuned for our upcoming article, where we’ll explore the trends and trends shaping contemporary Israeli art.
On the cover – artworks of Lena Guberman
Contacts:
Instargram Masha Malakh: https://www.instagram.com/malah_ma/
