Where Herzl Meets Ahad Ha’am

Eyal Adler Kellner’s painting operates on two poles, which are mutually attracted: the personal-intimate versus the collective-social. In many of his paintings, the protagonist is the artist himself, who works simultaneously in the private and the public spheres; observing the occurrences and actively operating in the fantastic realms of the painting.

Adler Kellner’s oeuvre over the years has been centered on the self-portrait. His recent portraits are signed with numbers, indicating the number of days of war in the current campaign alongside the number of hostages in Gaza, thus connecting the two poles. Reality bursts into the studio, undermining one’s individual existence. The personal dimension transpires in the still-life paintings as part of the observation of the assortment of objects, which represent remnants of life and art. The figure of the artist looks back at the viewer through the mirrors, installed between the items.

The exhibition’s centerpiece is the large-scale panoramic painting Harertzel, depicting the grave of the visionary of the state in the heart of the main ceremonial plaza on the eponymous Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem. Instead of the flowerbeds flanking the grave, the artist planted objects extracted from his paintings, thus neutralizing the Israeli national pathos. For Adler Kellner, Mount Herzl’s plaza represents the emptying of Israeli nationalism, the isolation and decline of the Zionist vision. The critical gaze is reinforced by the painting of black flags, fluttering over the concourse against the sky, as an ominous sign.

The title of the exhibition, “Where Herzl Meets Ahad Ha’am,” is the title of a 2010 painting by Adler Kellner, portraying two historical figures, representing rival Zionist currents, colliding on the corner of the Tel Aviv streets named after them, as the artist witnesses the imaginary event, which is transformed into a painterly reality. In the featured works, the painter assumes the title “Ahad Ha’am” (pen name of Asher Hirsch Ginsberg, which literally translates as “one of the people”), as an ordinary man, who observes the threatening reality and offers us escape to a world of painterly images.