New Series by Mexican Painter Examines Narratives and Memory Surrounding the Holocaust

 

NEW YORK, NY - Prussian Blue - Memory After Representation: Yishai Jusidman, a new series by Mexican painter Yishai Jusidman, is on view at Americas Society from January 23 through March 23, 2013.

Yishai Jusidman (b. Mexico City, 1963) finds in his new series, Prussian Blue, an alternative way to address the meeting of collective memory and aesthetics in order to deal with major concerns of both contemporary memorials and history-based artistic deliverances. Notably, Jusidman’s paintings provide an insightful approach to the dark strictures that have dominated the production of works dealing with the representation of the Holocaust. A press preview with the artist will be held on Thursday, January 23, 2013 from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. At the source of the fourteen paintings in the Prussian Blue series are photographs of the architecture of gas chambers at various concentration camps during World War II. The exhibition includes a condensed library-archive space in which selected books and films about the relationship between memory, trauma and artistic representation is available for the use of the public. On March 5, a panel discussion featuring the artist and art historians and critics will address issues pertaining to memory, trauma, and representation.

Prussian Blue – Memory after Representation: Yishai Jusidman is curated by Gabriela Rangel with the research assistance of Anya Pantuyeva, Veret Engelhard, and Christina de Leon.

Responding to an ethical imperative inspired by the works of Primo Levi and Claude Lanzmann to focus on issues of representation, memory and trauma, Prussian Blue aims to assert Jusidman's artistic investigation into the complexities of our contemporary visual experience through an operation that collates the materiality of the medium and the perception of the image in the meaning of the picture....

Read the full art review here.