With works by Adi Krauss after Nahum Tevet, Alex Zavitan after Yair Garbuz, Arik Weiss after Henry Shelesnyak, Anton Avramov Basat after Tamar Getter, Avner Pinchover after Micha Ullman, Bezalel Ben-Chaim after Michael Gross, Carmit Hassine after Tamar Getter, Chana Anushik Manhaimer after Yudith Levin, Dafna Talmon and Lilah Markman after Aviva Uri, Dafna Talmon after Yair Garbus, Dana Friedlander Oren after David Ginton, Didi Smoly Hamburger after Efrat Natan, Gali Lutski after Arie Aroch, Karin Dolin after Sarah Breitberg-Semel (catalogue), Michal Lazarovitz after Michal Na'aman, Moshe Roas after Menashe Kadishman, Or Inbar after Tsibi Geva, Or Zaid after Yaakov Dorchin, and Sharon Azagi after Nahum Tevet; additional works by Raffie Lavie, selected by Noemi Givon.

Part exhibition and part educational project, “What the Matter Wants?” is the culmination of a course that consisted of series of encounters, artists’ talks and studio visits held during the school year of 2017–2018 with students from Hamidrasha’s Postgraduate Fine Art Program. The encounters centered on exhibition projects from recent years that sought to revisit seminal conceptual and post-minimalist exhibitions from the 1960s, as well as on several key players in the field of Israeli art from around those years and “The Want of Matter: A Quality in Israeli Art,” the iconic exhibition curated by Sarah Breitberg-Semel at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 1986.

A first series of encounters were held with Nicola Trezzi, the project’s initiator and teacher of the related course, who acquainted the students with a number of such shows internationally, exhibitions whose express aim was to honor, pay homage to, or commemorate iconic exhibitions and key curatorial positions from the 1960s. Sharing facts, images, and stories on those shows – with the odd digression into other connected areas – the course covered three main exhibition projects.

The first one was “Other Primary Structures,” shown at the Jewish Museum in New York, in 2014; curated by Jens Hoffmann, it referenced “Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculptors,” an exhibition from 1966 curated by Kynaston McShine, also at the Jewish Museum. The second one was “When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/Venice 2013,” held at the Prada Foundation in Venice, in 2017; it was curated by Germano Celant together with Thomas Demand and Rem Koolhaas, and referenced “Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form,” the 1969 exhibition curated by Harald Szeemann at the Bern Kunsthalle. The third one was, “Arte Povera,” an exhibition project conceived by Triple Candie, was intended for the 2011 Artissima fair in Turin but was never shown. Cancelled by the director of the fair for which it was commissioned, it referenced “Arte Povera + Azioni Povere,” the famed 1968 exhibition curated by Germano Celant at the Amalfi Arsenal, Italy.

In a second series of encounters, the students were invited to studio visits and talks by artists from the generation that was at the focus of “The Want of Matter.” These included Nahum Tevet (studio visit, November 22, 2017), Tamar Getter (artist talk, November 29, 2017), Efrat Natan (studio visit, December 6, 2017), David Ginton (studio visit, December 13, 2017), Yudith Levin (artist talk, December 20, 2017), Yair Garbuz (studio visit, January 3, 2018), Tsibi Geva (studio visit, January 10, 2018) and Michal Na'aman (artist talk, February 7, 2018).

Following months of concentrated exposure to the art and curatorial practices of those years, students were invited to create works in connection with the Israeli artists of that generation. The works could take the form of a tribute, a work “inspired by,” or “made after”; they could also be a copy, a forgery, or even a direct replica. Now presented to the public, the project brings together the various ways students responded to this invitation, alongside original works by those artists whose inspiration was so decisive to them. With a few exceptions, these largely overlap with the artists whose works were selected by Breitberg-Semel for the seminal exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. 

“What the Matter Wants?” is a collaboration between the Givon Art Forum, a non-profit space located in the Neve Tzedek neighborhood, Tel Aviv, and the Postgraduate Fine Art Program at Hamidrasha, the Faculty of the Arts at the Beit Berl College. The project couldn’t happen without the vision of Noemi Givon, founder of Givon Art Forum, and Miri Segal, Head of the Postgraduate Fine Art Program. Key cooperation has been provided by Dan Arony, Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv / Brussels, Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv, The Israel Museum Jerusalem, Maya Kadishman, and Benno Kalev. Special thanks to all the artists who collaborated on this project and gave their permission for students to be inspired by their works. Additional thanks goes to the artists graduating from Hamidrasha’s Postgraduate Fine Art Program, who put their hearts and souls into this project.