The Museum of Fine Arts Boston presents Ori Gersht. History Repeating, an exhibition on view from August 28, 2012, through January 6, 2013 in the Henry and Lois Foster Gallery, featuring more than 30 works.
Ori Gersht Museum of Fine Arts Boston
Painterly photographs and evocative films that push boundaries with the latest technologies will be the focus of the exhibition, the first comprehensive survey of Ori Gersht’s career. The innovative artist (b. 1967) is known for seductive and surprising works that forge a connection between past and present—drawing upon the history of art and politics, as well as the artist’s memories of childhood in conflict-ridden Israel. Included will be 17 photographs and eight moving-image pieces made by the London-based artist since 1998, as well as six works selected by Gersht from across the MFA’s encyclopedic collection to punctuate the exhibition. Ori Gersht: History Repeating is sponsored by OneWorld Boston, a Cummings Foundation affiliate. Additional support is provided by the MFA Visiting Artists Fund, Robert and Jane Burke Fund for Exhibitions, Barbara Jane Anderson Fund, Artis – Contemporary Israeli Art Fund, and the Consulate General of Israel to New England.
The exhibition showcases all of Gersht’s distinctive art historical films presented on framed LCD screens. At first glance, they look like paintings based on European old -master still lifes, but they then subtly begin to move, revealing themselves to be animated and accompanied by sound. By wedding new technology to historic masterpieces, he is able to illustrate how creation and destruction are intrinsically linked, capturing the intersection of beauty and violence while exploring the passage of time. In Big Bang (2006, Collection of MFA Overseer Lizbeth Krupp and her husband, George Krupp), Gersht references 18th-century Dutch artist Jan van Huysum’s painting Hollyhocks and Other Flowers in a Vase (1702–20, National Gallery, London). Gersht’s version looks like the original until a faint mist and the strident sounds of a siren arise, revealing it to be a film in which flowers explode, sending petals dancing through the air.
Ori Gersht was born in Tel Aviv and lives in London. He holds a Masters in Photography from the Royal College of London. His work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Tate Britain, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Imperial War Museum, and August 28, 2012 through January 6, 2013 at that Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Additionally, Gersht’s work is in several esteemed collections including The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, the Israel Museum, the Jewish Museum, and the Tate. He was the first artist to show a work of video art simultaneously on multiple screens of New York City’s Times Square as part of the program “Times Square Moment: A Digital Gallery;” in April 2012.
For more information about the exhibition, please visit www.mfa.org