April, 2023

During the spring of 2023, curator Sofia Ringstedt worked in close dialogue with the artist Meriç Algün in preparation for her solo exhibition A Glossary of Distance and Desire, which opened on April 1st. Below, Sofia herself briefly describes the exhibition and her experience working on it.

Question: Depicting eternal love through visual art can be complex. How does Meriç Algün approach this theme?

Sofia Ringstedt: Just as the title suggests, A Glossary of Distance and Desire, the exhibition becomes like a spatial dictionary of separation and desire. In my opinion, Meriç approaches the themes in a systematic but playful and intuitive way. As often in Meriç’s artistic practice, she manages to convey multi-layered ideas that feel both innovative and self-evident through her works. The materials she presents follow their own logical system, where she has assembled different thought-worlds that open up how we can talk about love. Above all, I think she approaches the theme in an accepting and open manner, inviting the visitor to make their own connections and interpretations.

Q: The exhibition introduces us to an entirely new work by Meriç Algün that can be experienced in one of the visitor restrooms. How did it come about?

SR: For several years, Meriç has been working with and collecting Calvin Klein’s advertisements for the perfume Eternity. The advertising campaign for Eternity, which has spanned 35 years, features American model Christy Turlington portrayed with different men and children representing her happy family. The work Eternity 1988–∞ is an ongoing piece that currently consists of 44 full-page ads for the perfume, while the new sound piece Eternity (Forever) consists of edited audio tracks from the commercials. The works serve as humorous reminders of how capitalism can profit from our constant longing for eternal love. Initially, there was an idea to incorporate the audio tracks into Eternity 1988–∞, allowing visitors to experience them together with the ads. When we experimented with this, it quickly became clear that the sound needed its own defined space. Placing it inside one of the visitor restrooms brought out new aspects of the audio and it became apparent that it was a new autonomous work, Eternity (Forever). 

March, 2023

Kyung-Me (b. 1991 in Georgia, USA) is an artist working with drawings and illustrations. With meticulous methods inspired by both French draftsman Gustave Doré (1832–1883) and Japanese woodcuts, she creates detailed and dreamlike spatialities.

Three works by Kyung-Me were on view at Magasin III during the spring of 2023, as part of the exhibition In the Eye of the Beholder. Curator Sofia Ringstedt got in contact with the artist and asked her about the works, which are also part of our collection.

Sofia Ringstedt: Your works are incredibly rich in detail, and I understand that your artistic process is very time consuming. You have mentioned Gustave Doré as source of inspiration to you, for his meticulousness. You have also mentioned ancient Japanese woodblock prints as a source of inspiration, seen in your motifs and how you approach perspective. What is it that draws you to Japanese woodblock prints?

Kyung-Me: When I was first becoming interested in art, I gravitated towards Japanese woodblock prints. In the interior scenes, I was drawn to the seemingly effortless arrangement of objects that appear both natural and immaculate. I was also mesmerized by the mixture of patterns and textures within one image, which is something I try to employ in my work.

SR: In Ghost 1 and Ghost 4 (2018), seemingly solitary individuals are depicted in narrow rooms. They are facing away, with their backs turned to us. As viewers, we never get to meet their gazes. What can you tell us of this choice?

K-M: For this series, I was not interested in showing a face. At the time, I was thinking of a male subject who was completely immersed in his own private psychodrama. In one drawing, the male subject blocks out his face with a hand. In another, his face is blocked out by the bathroom tile. I wanted to give the subject his privacy, as well as allow the viewer to freely gaze around the room. 

Kyung-Me, Ghost 1, 2018. Collection Magasin III. Photo: Jean-Baptiste Béranger.

Kyung-Me, Ghost 4, 2018. Collection Magasin III. Photo: Jean-Baptiste Béranger.

SR: In Half Mourning IV (2018) you portrayed a lavishly decorated room, empty of people but full of impressions and details. An elegant garment is laid out on the bed. The black color of the garment, together with the title, brings mourning garments to mind. What does the title mean to you in this work?

K-M: The term ‘Half-Mourning’ comes from the Victorian Era. During this time of plague and subsequent mass death, there were stringent rules for how a woman should behave and dress during a period of mourning. When a woman’s husband died, she was expected to mourn for three to four years.  For the first half of mourning, a woman was expected to shroud herself in an oppressive crepe mourning gown. After about two years, at the halfway point of mourning, a woman was permitted to wear more sensual mourning attire as a way to signal potential new suitors. To me, the costume evoked a hollow in-between state between grief and the need to move on.  

February, 2023

Leann Wolf has been a curatorial assistant at Magasin III Jaffa since 2019 and has worked on exhibitions featuring artists such as Cosima von Bonin, Tal R, Polly Apfelbaum, and Maya Attoun. This spring, Leann is spending a few weeks in Sweden to work closely with us, her colleagues at Magasin III in Stockholm.

Question: Could you tell us a little about Magasin III Jaffa and what your role entails?

Leann Wolf: Magasin III Jaffa is an exhibition space, a permanent satellite established in 2018 by Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art. It is located in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israel, and features both local and international contemporary artists. I’m the curatorial assistant at Magasin III Jaffa so I get to assist with the research and execution of exhibitions, creating content for public programs and events, and I’m also in charge Magasin III Jaffa’s artist books’ store which opened last year. 

Q: This spring, you are staying in Stockholm. What will you be working on here?

LW: Fortunately, I have the opportunity to work on the program around Maya Attoun’s exhibition Solar Mountains & Broken Hearts. I was part of the team that worked on the exhibition when it was first exhibited in Magasin III Jaffa, so this is very exciting.

December, 2022

Lotta Antonsson, born in 1963 in Varberg, belongs to a generation of artists, schooled in the 1990s, whose work early on was influenced by postmodernist and feminist theories. Antonsson’s later works repurpose collected photographic material from the 1960s and 1970s, which are processed, cut into pieces, and reassembled into collages. The female body, a motif that Antonsson constantly returns to, is often presented as fragmented and organically interlinked with natural materials, such as shells, stones, and driftwood.

Antonsson’s work Monika (2021), was on view in the fall of 2022 and spring of 2023 as part of our group exhibition In the Eye of the Beholder. Curator Sofia Ringstedt has spoken to Antonsson about the work in relation to the exhibition’s theme – beholding, either oneself or someone else.

Sofia Ringstedt: Your work Monika is a fragmented collage of photographic material representing the 1960s icon Monica Vitti. Who was Monica Vitti to you?

Lotta Antonsson: Monica Vitti was an exceptionally versatile actress, both ethereal and cool at the same time—and she became a symbol of sorts of integrity with her sublimely stripped-down acting style. In my eyes, there is no one better than her in portraying the existential emptiness of people who undergo internal development. The manner and method of her acting fascinate me—using subtle, low-key means, almost reduced to silence, to express something huge, existential, and emotionally vibrating.

SR: In Monika, as in many of your works, we viewers are not allowed to meet the gaze of the subject. Could you tell us something about your choice to cover Vitti’s eyes and teeth?

LA: As you say, I have many times used different objects, usually shells or precious stones, in different works to cover the eyes or mouths. I see it as symbolically creating a kind of inner space, to some extent a blank space or gap between image and viewer.

In the work Monika, that would be the fluorite crystals that lie over the eyes and across the teeth. Green raw stones that guard her gaze. To view or to be viewed. Or maybe even to view what it is to be viewed. Fluorite also has a spiritual significance in various cultures, where it is claimed to be a gemstone that opens up the intellect, transforms negative energy, and heightens receptivity to creativity. Covering the eyes of the deceased with objects, such as shells, coins, or pebbles, is historically and culturally also a reminder not to fear the inevitability of death. Simply a guard. Against fear.

May, 2023

In a short interview, museum director Tessa Praun shares her thoughts on why Magasin III has been inviting artists to comment on other artistic practices within an ongoing exhibition.

Question: For some time now, Magasin III has been inviting artists to comment on other artistic practices within an ongoing exhibition. We see examples of this in Jill Magid’s commentary on Chris Burden’s performative practice (fall 2022), and most recently with Lucia Pizzani’s performance in Maya Attoun’s exhibition. Can you tell us more about the thoughts behind this approach?

Tessa Praun: Allowing art to comment on art is a continuation of Magasin III’s long history of producing new works in collaboration with artists. As a museum, it is our task to continually contextualize the works in our collection and find different ways to deepen the understanding of these artistic practices.

Magasin III started in 1987 as a kunsthalle without a collection and has grown into a museum with an extensive and complex collection over the following three decades. We continue to build upon our history of exhibiting, producing, and collecting. We now also provide the audience with access to the processes that lead to an exhibition, a new artwork, or the work involved in caring for the art when it is not on display. Today, our exhibition program is more closely connected to our collection, while the creation of new works remains an integral part of Magasin III’s DNA. In the midst of lectures, conversations, and seminars taking place at other art institutions in Stockholm, it became important for us to find our own way of deepening and activating ongoing exhibitions. It was natural for us to go back to the core of our activities, namely the artists, and invite them to develop something in direct dialogue with another artist’s work.

Q: How have the artists’ processes and reactions been?

TP: Both Jill Magid and Lucia Pizzani displayed visible enthusiasm in artistically responding to the works of Chris Burden and Maya Attoun, respectively. In Pizzani’s case, she was approached to create a performance work, a medium she enjoys working with, while Magid’s invitation was more open-ended. I greatly admire how Jill Magid and Lucia Pizzani approached Burden’s and Attoun’s artistic practices with respect, without compromising their own artistic vision and integrity.

When we started to ponder on who to invite for our first art commenting on art, Oliver Krug, Senior Registrar at Magasin III, brought Jill Magid to the conversation. Initially, Jill proposed showcasing one of her older works in relation to a specific performance by Chris Burden, as there were evident and exciting connections between the two. However, when Jill changed her mind a few weeks later, her gesture became even stronger and formulated a comprehensive commentary on Burden’s performative practice. We borrowed her work Auto Portrait Pending from 2005 and also produced a brand new piece titled Foreign Body Ingested (Portrait of My Son), which is now part of Magasin III’s collection. Both works were presented in three vitrines placed in the midst of Burden’s exhibition during its final four weeks. Jill also gave a lecture where she had the opportunity to problematize certain aspects of Burden’s performative works while expressing how much his art has meant to her. The lecture is available to watch on our website.

Lucia Pizzani visited Stockholm for two days in January, spent time in Maya Attoun’s exhibition, and immediately had a vision of what she wanted to create. She focused on the historical volcanic eruption that inspired Maya’s works in Solar Mountains & Broken Hearts – both in terms of the atmosphere she wanted to create, the soundscape she chose, and the black sand that took center stage in her performance artwork, Lava. Oliver Krug and Leann Wolff, Assistant Curator at Magasin III Jaffa, were in close dialogue with Lucia throughout the process as she developed the final piece, which premiered in March. The result beautifully and respectfully aligned with Maya’s visual and conceptual world. Maya Attoun, who unexpectedly passed away just six months prior, was open to involving other creative individuals in her work. The exhibition as a whole, including Lucia Pizzani’s performance, became a tribute to an artistic voice that was silenced too soon.

The exhibition A Glossary of Distance and Desire by Meriç Algün, which opened in early April this year, is another example of art commenting on art. It started with the group exhibition Focus: Lawrence Weiner, which inspired us to install Meriç Algün’s poster artwork successes, failures, and in-betweens (2012) in our entrance area, a work that is part of our collection. Both artists’ works revolve around text and language. It felt relevant to allow the audience to experience two closely related but distinct artistic practices side by side. The conversations that Curator Sofia Ringstedt and I had with Meriç before installing the poster artwork opened up further points of connection between them. This led us to invite Meriç to take on the exhibition space next to Focus: Lawrence Weiner – in dialogue with Weiner’s works but as an independent exhibition.

Q: What are your hopes for this concept?

TP: My hope is that both our audience and our team gain new perspectives on a work or an exhibition, that it triggers unexpected thought processes and conversations, and ultimately contributes to a more open-minded approach as we navigate the world.

October, 2021

Our chief technician Thomas Nordin is constantly at work managing our collection and the logistics involved in new acquisitions and lending out works. Since the beginning in 1987, Magasin III’s collection has grown hand in hand with our exhibition program, and the collection currently comprises over 1,100 works.

Thomas Nordin: In my work with the collection, I have the opportunity to cooperate closely with artists regarding technical issues to do with their artworks. Most of the works are like a musical score—instructions that must be followed, and a lot of what we do has to happen in dialog with the artist so that everything is done right. During my years as a technician at Magasin III, I have dealt with many interesting and complex works, such as Tom Friedman’s Up in the Air, a work that contains over 800 individual parts. I also encounter many skilled specialists, such as conservators in fields like painting, paper, and textiles. I really appreciate the knowledge and commitment they bring to the work with the collection, not least because our collection is highly varied in terms of the materials, size, techniques, and installations. This is also what makes caring for the collection such an extensive task. Our lending activities enable the artists’ works to meet a new audience at the institutions that borrow works from us. When we lend works, I sometimes have to go along and be there during the unpacking, installation, and takedown. That is when an exchange happens between the art institutions, which I find to be very valuable.

August, 2021

Idun Baltzersen’s Blå timmen (The Blue Hour) from 2018 was on view at Magasin III in the spring and fall 2021 as part of the exhibition A Quiet Spring Wanders Through the Apartment. Below you can read a short interview with the artist about the work.

Question: In Blå timmen, as in many of your other works, the characters you depict are shown with their backs turned toward the observer. Can you tell us more about these figures?

Idun Baltzersen: I think the back is interesting because it is a part of your body you can’t see yourself. There’s something unfamiliar about backs. The turned-away characters are also unfamiliar to the observer; they are ignoring the observer or are busy with something and therefore cannot meet the observer’s gaze. They are also often young women. Braids and ponytails are well-suited to woodcuts. When I created this artwork, I was particularly interested in equestriennes and how the riders’ braids were often reflected in the horses’ tails, and when these are done in woodcuts, they begin to look increasingly similar. The stable is also quite difficult as a setting. I am also interested in recreating a social structure or hierarchy. The characters can be depicted in groups, but they don’t interact with each other; they look quite alone. I am often inspired by popular culture, film, and television, and I collect visual references by doing things like taking screenshots or finding my own ways of recreating interesting gestures or characters I find.

Q: How would you describe the process of creating Blå timmen?

IB: I always collect a number of characters before doing a work like Blå timmen. I then make simple sketches based on these characters, which I use as the foundation, projecting them onto plywood. I follow the factory format (most often 122 x 244 cm) and select the type of wood carefully because some are softer and others can give a very woody texture to the finished print. Birch, which I used in Blå timmen, is soft and doesn’t have a particular texture, which allows me to carve freely in all directions. I carve a single character into each plywood sheet, which is painted black so I can see what I’m doing as I carve the lightness from the picture. When the picture is finished, it is time to print, which I do by hand on textiles in different dyes. After I’ve done about five prints of each character, I sort the different colors into piles and try to figure out which ones fit together. Then I cut the prints and lay them on the floor in my studio, moving the different figures around and trying to find a good composition, almost as if they were paper dolls. When I’m pleased with how it looks, I sew everything together.

December, 2020

Unity Purity Occasional from 2000 was created by Charles Long in connection with the exhibition Siobhán Hapaska, Charles Long, Ernesto Neto at Magasin III. The exhibition brought together three artistic practices that worked with sculpture and tactility. With Unity Purity Occasional, Long wanted to engage the audience in a collective purification ritual, a washing of hands with antibacterial gel. The purification ritual, according to the artist himself, referred to not only physical, but also spiritual purification.
 
Before the museum’s reopening in October 2020, the work was installed in the entrance of Magasin III. In an email interview, we asked Charles Long to reflect on Unity Purity Occasional as it is reactivated in the current context.

Olga Krzeszowiec Malmsten: What are your thoughts on Unity Purity Occasional (U.P.O) today? Do you perceive it differently now as our society finds itself in an utterly different state than when the artwork was created? 

Charles Long: U.P.O. has stayed the same for me but through its lens I perceive my art differently, and it confirms a new responsibility and relationship developing in my practice. When I made the work in 2000 I thought I had lost my mind. I had made the drawing, sent it to Stereolab, the piece was commissioned by Magasin III and I began fabrication. Midway through I thought, ‘what the heck am I doing, this piece seems frivolous, without merit’, and I was tortured by the preposterousness of it. Initially I had been quite compelled to create a work that made a sacred and communal act out of purifying the social body so that it could have safe physical contact. In the act of washing in public with a small group of people, it would simultaneously bring awareness to us of the sacredness of permeable boundaries; that we are here as separate beings in order to heal as one. To do this we first need to take care of our ‘viruses’, literally and figuratively. I believed this act was both spiritual and biological in the sense that we do not want to add harm in the process of connection. How could we cleanse our spirits and bodies so as to have safe union? The music, the hand gel, the glass and steel forms, and the bodies might reconstruct an ancient ritual we have been doing all along but also pointing to future ritual practices we will need and desire. It’s weird how that was on my mind in 2000 and still is. So the piece is the same! But this experience of having a work I felt lacked relevance in 2000 now finding a pertinent moment as it greets art viewers entering the museum in 2020 reinforces what I have been learning: I am not the mastermind of my art. I am its helper.

OKM: You have mentioned that this particular artwork was a transitional piece for you. Could you elaborate on that?

CL: So while making the work, I asked my assistant at the time if the work had integrity. He said, ‘maybe not but it sure is fun’. He was right about the fun. The Stereolab track is contagiously fun to dance to with others as you wash up. However, I had a begun journey at that time, and ‘fun’ was definitely not permitted. The idea for this work came to me while I was in the Sinai Desert recovering from nearly overdosing in a hotel in Cairo. When I got back to NYC and had committed to so many parties, (museum, Stereolab, glass blowers, etc.)  to make this complicated work, I started to question whether my art was focused on the most important issues for myself. This was part of questioning everything, not just what was art, or what is my art, but all that I had been doing in my life until then. I began asking how I could do this life best. This led to my quitting the art world as quickly as I could, closing the Chelsea studio and going west to teach full time. Straightaway, and ever since, it is my work with students that has revealed to me the immense importance of art in my life and the universe. I now am convinced that this experience we are here to have is art itself, the universe is artwork. Art can be medicine even when, and perhaps especially when, it appears to be absurd or destructive. Perhaps the one thing I still would question is the value of works that could be merely distracting. Decide that one for yourselves. Is the work you make or spend time with leading to a better life for you? To me, U.P.O. seemed like a distraction back when I was making it, so, I don’t know about this.

OKM: Unity Purity Occasional invites its audience to collectively perform a ritual of purification. Which aspects of the ritual were of particular interest to you when you made the artwork?

CL: All kinds of physical connection! I would love to make out with strangers occasionally if it were safe and welcome. I did do this once at an opening I had in Austin, TX. Happy pre-Covid days for sure. What will happen socially all over the world once the vaccine rolls out? Whoa, get ready folks! Marvelous that saliva is so protective. Coronaviruses are not sexually transmittable. So the next artwork I could design for Magasin III could be a collection of small rooms where people can enter separately and then I would just cut out a few small holes in the walls connecting them at around waist height. How’s that sound? ; )

OKM: Considering the new context that the work finds itself in, what is your hope for the audience today with U.P.O.?

CL: The quarantine has been an amazing time of reflection for me. Perhaps the entire world? A journey inward since March 2020. Time to see my sick country (not just the virus, but the entire ‘ill’-considered way we have been living) and ask how I can be part of its healing. The answer is the same as what happened to me in 2000 – to continue to heal myself and offer kindness and respect to all beings. And in our solitude anyone can drop into meditation at any moment. Just stop, and be still. Global rushing of progress gets to stop and reflect and heal the real wounds; the virus may save us.

It has been an outward journey too. I have met some of the most amazing human healers during this time, as well as healing pets, plants, wild critters and artworks. I even ‘met’ the divine through a medicine called 5-MeO-DMT. So yeah, if I were to ‘hope’ anything for U.P.O. and its participants, it is that we see the benefits of tending to purify ourselves from within and develop our awareness. Also that we do not contaminate other souls with potentially harmful demons we are still in the process of getting to know. And then, with loving kindness, heal those unheard, unseen ‘viruses’. Kindness and respect to all beings. And fun.

Smadar Dreyfus (1963) born in Israel and is London based since 1990. She holds a BFA from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, and MFA from the Royal College of Art, followed by postgraduate study at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL. Dreyfus works across audio, video and photography in the context of installation. She investigates the role of the voice in contested public spaces, how social and political situations reverberate in the everyday at a particular moment in time, and the way culture is embedded in and through speech on the level of affect. Dreyfus has exhibited solo exhibitions at prestigious museums and galleries such as Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany (2014); Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art, Sweden (2009); Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerpen, Belgium (2008). In addition, she has participated in many group exhibitions at the Busan Biennale, South Korea (2018); CaixaForum Barcelona, Spain (2018); Berlin Documentary Forum 3, Germany (2014). Furthermore, her works are part of important collections and she won multiple prestigious awards.

MIII JAFFA: Hi Smadar, how are you doing these days?

S.D: I am fine, at home in London on this long pause since March. Resetting after two years of too much travel. Catching up on maintenance, stopping and starting, reflecting on distance as a condition, as material, as obstacle and as opportunity.

MIII JAFFA: Can you tell us something about your work from M III collection we see here?

S.D: ‘360 degrees’ was filmed in 2006, on a warm Friday evening by the beachfront that borders Jaffa and Tel Aviv, where multiple sections of society share this specific public space. It was jointly directed with my partner, Lennaart van Oldenborgh who performed this very slow reflective gaze in real-time, that we experience through the camera movement over a long 26 minute take. It’s a kind of uninterrupted ‘scan’ of the landscape, using a very deep telephoto lens, trying to capture something subliminal and contradictory that resides in the quotidian, under the multiple layers of the social topology in that space and time.
It starts with a close view of diners on the balcony of a high-end beach restaurant, it slowly moves on to people on the sandy shore with a view of Jaffa in the background, to the seawater and bathers, to those who stroll on the promenade and families having mangal in the grassy park, all the way back to the restaurant. As the camera ‘scans’ these scenes in a continuous take it simultaneously reveals and conceals multiple micro-narratives, but never lingers on any one in particular. I recorded the sound simultaneously with the camera movement, pointing the microphone in the opposite direction to that of the lens.
The Tel Aviv beach was also central to my large scale installation ‘Lifeguards’, recorded in 2002, at the time of the 2nd intifada, during my re-encounter and stay in Israel after many years away. I was listening and looking at something that was so familiar to me but from a shifted perspective.
To me the beach is a sort of liminal space in between, like an edge, or an interface, and in our 360 degrees take I think there’s a fragile sense of how the various social groups co-inhabited this space; not really mingling with each other, they almost seem to ignore each other’s presence. This sharing of the space stands in contrast with the enormous gulf between them socially, economically and politically, in a context of seeming normality.

MIII JAFFA: In the context of these days, do you experience it differently?

S.D: We’re watching it from the distance and temporality of our London lockdown, and with the biopolitical crisis unfolding all around. This extremely slow real-time footage from 14 years ago contrasts for us with the current streams of real-time live-feed images coming from Israel, of the upsurge of mass protests against Netanyahu’s regime that are taking over many open-air spaces for several months now (including by that same beachfront). Something fundamental seems to be shifting and surfacing.
I’m also thinking of the Palestinians present in our footage, such as Rawan, the boy heard talking with me while we film, curious about our shoot and explaining he is from Beit-Iksa, a village north-west of Jerusalem; by now he is surely no longer a boy. One wonders when they will be able to enjoy the beach again like they were 14 years ago.

MIII JAFFA: What are you working on right now?

S.D: The pandemic has brought to a halt a long-term working process on a project based on documentary recordings, which I am unable to discuss yet. It will hopefully emerge. Otherwise I use some of the time to work through my archives and my grandfather’s collection of 1920’s postcards of cactus species photographed in Leipzig. He was an autodidact horticulturist and according to family stories the postcards accompanied 80 actual cactus plants which he brought to Palestine on the ship from Marseilles to Jaffa in 1933.

MIII JAFFA: Thoughts about the future?

S.D: So much is unpredictable from the personal to the socio-political. While it seems that a lot is suspended or slowed down, I suspect that things are probably changing faster than we are able to grasp.

Gil Shani (born in 1968) lives and works in Tel Aviv. He holds a BFA from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, where he also lectures today. Shani is a painter and installation artist, his works deal with the relationship between the human body and the environment in which it exists, as well as cultural symbols. His paintings are characterized by a schematic outline and flat style against a monotonous background. His large-scale installations reflect banal and everyday life moments, while creating an experience of astonishment and anxiousness.
Shani has exhibited solo exhibitions at prestigious museums and galleries including, the Israel Museum, Israel (2018); Tempo Rubato Gallery, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel (2014); Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel (2011); Frode contemporary art space, Genève, Switzerland (2009); Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel (2009); Museum of Underground Prisoners, Jerusalem, Israel (2003).
In addition, he participated in many group exhibitions, his works are part of important collections and he won multiple prestigious awards.

MIII JAFFA: Hi Gil, how are you these days?

G.S: My son is finally in kindergarten and I got out of bed :)

MIII JAFFA: Tell us something about your work from M III collection we see here.

G.S: The body in the drawing is loose, perhaps sealing himself from the world. The phone on the dresser is ringing or maybe its silent? These are tensions and moments I seek.

MIII JAFFA: In the context of these days, do you experience it differently?

G.S: I always loved to sleep and now the whole world has to make a “stop” all the more so. When I sleep I prefer to sleep with my head above the pillow :)

MIII JAFFA: What are you currently working on?

G.S: These days I paint and work on an installation related to the back kitchen of a restaurant, and I paint shelves and air conditioners in the studio. This vision has been in my head for a long time. I live above a restaurant. That’s how my idea for an installation begins … still ripening. It is too early to understand where and when.

MIII JAFFA: Thoughts on the future?

G.S: Right now we’re collapsing, I imagine reptiles, birds, mammals. The campus is dead.