“The Wall of Dignity”
23.01.2015 2023-11-21 11:33“The Wall of Dignity”
admin From 29 January to 28 February 2015, the Museum of Odesa Modern Art presents the exhibition “The Wall of Dignity” by Matviy Weisberg.
This exhibition unites two series of works, two “Walls”, one of which was created in 2012 and consists of 32 paintings that are part of the cycle “Scenes from the Tanakh” (2007). The author took as a canvas the illustrations to the Old Testament by Hans Holbein (Jr.) and put his impressions of his trips to Jerusalem into them. The result was an epoch-making work consisting of independent paintings.
Matviy Vaisberg created the second “Wall” in 2014 after the most dramatic events on the Maidan, which focused the attention of the entire world community on Ukraine and became a turning point in the history of our country – the “Revolution of Dignity”. The series consists of 28 paintings.
The artist said: “I started painting during the truce. I felt that a lot of anger, sadness, hope, pain had accumulated inside… The intensity of the feelings required an outlet. Then I took three blanks for my previous “Wall” and clearly understood in what form I wanted to work. Naturally, my Old Testament cycle of paintings turned into a modern, revolutionary one.”
Such a density of events, such a burning of human feelings in such high concentration and in such quantity are usually inaccessible to observation. Through routine, you do not understand the scale of what is happening at any given time in human life. But the ancient Greek tragedians knew this, and so did those who wrote down real and fictional stories in the Tanakh, one of the “notebooks” of humanity. All times are Old Testament, and only the lack of proper distance, self-confidence and fuss prevent many people from noticing this.
The Tanakh, like great works of art, presents human passions and tragedies, love and hate, suffering and sorrow, despair and hope, strength of spirit, betrayal and deception, anger and emotion, envy and jealousy, awe and poverty of spirit, vices and virtues. Modern technology changes a lot, but it changes people very little. It’s about us, about the trials of life, about the trials of each other. It is about the search for Dignity.
“Matviy Weisberg’s The Wall is a monument to the rebellious human dignity. It is the artist’s message to the world, a document of time, a piece of the historical wall. “We are given to work, but we are not given to finish our work” (Lyon Feuchtwanger. 1933). We do not know what exactly we are building. Whether our descendants will appreciate it or not – time will set the distance and give an assessment.
INFORMATION ABOUT THE EXHIBITION AND CONTACTS:
The opening of the exhibition “The Wall of Dignity” will take place at the Museum of Odesa Modern Art on 29 January at 4 p.m. at the following address: 5 Belinskogo St., Odesa
