Entering the Art and Soul Gallery on Shlomtzion Ha-Malka Street, you exit Jerusalem. The curious visitor, stepping in from this busy street in the center of the city, is confronted with an exhibition of landscapes depicting a Jerusalem at odds with the reality outside. The Jerusalem outside is dirty, tense, and enraged; hot and cold; contentious and unjust; a wound sheathed in white stone. Inside, on the walls of the gallery, are calm and verdant provincial seats, quaint and homey mountain towns.
The exhibition, entitled “Of Gold,” is up-and-coming artist Jonathan Kis-Lev’s first solo show in Jerusalem. Born in 1985 to Russian immigrants, Kis-Lev was raised in a small village on the outskirts of Jerusalem. He has participated in a number of joint exhibitions in Israel, including “B-Sides” at the Tel Aviv Culture Conference and “Home” at the Apart-Art Gallery. “Of Gold” is part of a larger interest in urban spaces. In 2010, he was the youngest artist to hold an exhibition of landscapes of the city of Naharia, entitled “Naharia My Love,” at the Edge Gallery in that city.
Read the full story from 2011 in Zeek.
Samuel Thrope 