Marion Baruch / Achu Pnimi (Inner Meadow)
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Sommer Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the opening of Marion Baruch’s solo exhibition, Achu Pnimi, at our gallery space in Tel-Aviv, located on the first floor on the left at Herzl 16 on Thursday, June 24th. Opening hours: Tues-Thurs- 11:00-18:00, Fri- 10:00-14:00.

For the occasion of the exhibition, the renowned Romanian-born, Italy-based artist Marion Baruch has created a site-specific installation for the gallery space, featuring recent fabric sculptures. Since 2013, Marion Baruch has made a major artistic shift by taking an interest in left-overs of fabric and cut-ups from the textile and the ready-to-wear fashion industry. From this material, she has created sculptures and pictorial artworks that influence and reconstruct the space by their presence.

At the age of 92, the artist and her work are being rediscovered for their true significance. Baruch proposes a feminine, socially engaged work which constantly aims to question its own status, through the use of relational art, installation and sculptures, characterized by political and poetical anti-establishment positions. Her fabric sculptures introduce a dialogue between two immaterial forces: space and memory. She uses dialogue as a form of creation, waste as a potential object, emptiness as a shape of the possible, and mediation as an act of creation. In this way, the artist addresses themes related to the body, the production world and resource consumption.

At Sommer Contemporary Art, Baruch presents “Achu Pnimi” (Hebrew for “Inner Meadow”) as a place of discovery, a living surface that could change with a blowing of the wind or a simple gesture. It is a place where one could bump into many forms of existence, which could appear familiar and close and at the same time wild. “Achu Pnimi” is a woman-made nature with uncertain borders and only a few elements as its limits. In this intimate space, words are participating in shaping each work and its texture. Each work is an invitation to find our own inner meadow and walk around it freely, untamed, forever playful.

In her work Fiori, Baruch transforms pieces of fabric into what could seem as great flowers growing across the walls of the gallery. The fabric folds, slopes and unfolds by its own weight, revealing unique figures that are decorative, raw and sensual all at once. In another work, Apparizione e Scomparsa, the fabric sculpture appears as if it was a negative of the clothes we wear, inviting us to pay close attention to what has been left out, to the gaps, to the presence of what isn’t there, or in Baruch’s own words: “It’s the void, and there’s possibility in the void: it contains everything, it contains surprise, life and emotion, which is what I need”.

Marion Baruch was born in Timişoara, Romania in 1929, and began her studies at the Bucharest Academy of Arts. She came to Israel in 1950 to study at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, and even presented her first solo exhibition in Israel. She then continued her studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti of Rome and moved to Italy, where she lives and works to this day. She has had recent solo exhibitions at Les Abattoirs, Musée – Frac Occitanie Toulouse, France (2020/21), Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland (2020), Magasin des horizons, Grenoble, France (2020), Galerie Urs Meile, Switzerland (2020), La BF15, France (2019), MA*GA, Italy (2018), Artissima Art Fair, Italy (2017), Galerie Anne-Sarah Bénichou, France (2017/20) and Galerie Laurence Bernard, Switzerland (2016/19). Baruch has been included in group exhibitions at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Switzerland (2021), Fondation CAB, France & Belgium (2021), Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland (2021), Musée régional d’art contemporain, Sérignan, France (2020), Galerie Urs Meile, Switzerland (2020), Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain de Nice, France (2020), Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France (2019), The 2019 Art & Industry Triennale – Frac Grand Large, France, Centre d’art contemporain, Amilly, France (2018), Contemporary Art Biennale, Muzeul de Art Arad; Muzeul de Artă Timişoara, Romania (2017), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Argentina (2017) and the XXI Triennale di Milano, Design Museum, Italy (2016).