Ocula Conversation Kim Tschang-Yeul: Art Without Ego Kim Tschang-Yeul turns 90 this December, following an illustrious career that played a crucial role in bringing post-war Korean painting into the modern and contemporary art canon. Long celebrated for pensive depictions of water drops, the esteemed artist uses dual languages of abstraction and hyperrealism to articulate the psychological traumas...
Ocula Conversation Melati Suryodarmo: Performance Art as Trigger In 2012, Melati Suryodarmo opened Studio Plesungan in her native Surakarta, also known as Solo, the historic royal capital of the Mataram Empire of Java in Indonesia. Suryodarmo had returned to Indonesia from Germany, where she studied Butoh and choreography with Butoh dancer and choreographer Anzu Furukawa, time-based media with avantgarde...
Ocula Report In a Year of No Future: Cyberpunk at Hong Kong’s Tai Kwun 22 Nov 2019 : Emily Verla Bovino for Ocula In what was reportedly Tokyo's cloudiest summer in over a century this July, Yoshiji Kigami, key animator of the cyberpunk classic Akira (1988), died in an arson attack that killed 35 people at Kyoto Animation. The attacker lit the fire with a lighter after dousing the studio with gasoline. 'They are always stealing', he explained in the belief the...
Ocula Insight | Video Hans Hartung and Art Informel at Mazzoleni London (1 October 2019-18 January 2020) presents key works by the French-German painter while highlighting his connection with artists active in Paris during the 50s and 60s. In this video, writer and historian Alan Montgomery discusses Hartung's practice and its legacy.Born in Leipzig in 1904, Hans...
The Tel Aviv Museum of Art, or TAMA as it is colloquially known, was founded in 1932 by the first Mayor of Tel Aviv, Meir Dizengoff, and was originally located in Dizengoff's own home. As the collection of art grew, it became apparent that the museum required a larger space and in 1959 it moved to its current location. In addition to the main building, the museum also built the Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art which is home to many temporary exhibitions, and the new Hert and Paul Amir Building, which was designed by Preston Scott Cohen and opened in 2011.
In addition to these three main buildings, the TAMA complex also includes the Lola Beer Ebner Sculpture Garden, Nata's Garden and the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Art Education Centre. These additional spaces host many temporary exhibitions and community based workshops, focused on engaging visitors with the art on show.
TAMA's permanent art collection is divided into six departments which include: the Department of Israeli Art, the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, the Department of Prints and Drawings, the Department of Photography, the Department of Architecture and Design and the Old Masters Department.Among this vast collection, prominent artists include Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, Gustav Klimt, Jackson Pollock and Wassily Kandinsky.
The importance of the museum in the context of Israel contemporary art is recognised in the numerous art prizes awarded to local emerging artists each year. These prizes include the Rappaport Prize for an Establised Israeli Painter, the Rappaport Prize for a Young Israeli Painter, the Eugen Kolb Prize for Israeli Graphic Art and the Shmuel Givon Prize.These prizes hosted by TAMA, exemplify the status of the museum as one of the most important public institutions in Tel Aviv, the self-proclaimed cultural capital of Israel.
