Jan Rauchwerger "Parthenon in My Life"

, Gordon  Gallery, February – March 2015, Tel Aviv

ELA BELKERVEL
Jerusalem

Parthenon in my life

              A new exhibition by the artist Jan Rauchwerger called “Parthenon in my life” is taking place in Gallery “Gordon”, which is located in the center of Tel Aviv.

A connection with great traditions and world culture inspired the gallery owner Amon Yariv to make a special selection of art for this exhibition.

A meeting between the artist and visitors took place one week after the opening, and the main question posed was: “As a painter, why did you choose sculpture, and why was it concealed until now?”

The expansive essay by poetess Shva Salhov, gives the following answer to this question: “The object of Jan’s sculpture is volume. A dramatic shift from the real-life model into the sculpture is very obvious. During the work the object has been split and then re-integrated into the whole piece again. This process brings the artist to the more fundamental understanding of life and transforms the real model into a symbol of the female.”

Humanism of Renaissance, elusive and sensual, intimate and universal, connections and contrasts, flat and volume, organic, anthroposophy and symbolism – these are the diverse definitions used by Shva to describe her impressions.

Jan shared stories about how his sculptures, created in the 1970s, were stored in mezzanine “to make life easier,” and how they were cast in bronze in preparation for the exhibition. Some sculptures have signs of the dialogue with Giacometti, yet the female sculptures of Rauchwerger are closer to the Earth, and grow up from it. Powerful, expressive and restrained at the same time, they recall the works of Marini, Maillol, and to some extent Rodin.

In her article about the exhibition, Irena Gordon pays specific attention to the name “Parthenon in my life” – Athens, the Temple, the Acropolis – and suggests a full range of possible associations, from poems by the English poet Keats to a children's game of marbles.

Irena writes: “It is the search for new forms and relations between them, the search for points of connections and varieties of plastic ties for the last that forces the artist Jan Rauchwerger to sculpt in clay, papier- mâché and plasticine.”

The exhibit shifts from drawings and sketches to the sculptures, which attract special attention, and no wonder – even longtime admirers of Jan will have difficulty recognizing the hand of the Master in an unexpected conglomeration of works.“At this fifty-fifth personal exhibition in the Gordon Gallery, for the first time Rauchwerger has used sculpture to realize his architectural fantasies, which significantly expands the body of his work. The sculptures were transformed into real buildings and parts of buildings in such a way that they clearly mastered the volume of the gallery, and started cooperating with it.”

Jan says that in times past, gentiles used to practice a magic ritual where they would stroke wooden statuettes hanging from their belts. These amulets, which protected health, were stroked down to their complete erasure.

On the right-hand side of the entrance to the gallery there stand two-meter high, glazed columns that form aluminum cylinder pipes. While passing the cylinders, Full article here