Grapevine: In Rio

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
Shahar Zubari (photo credit: Courtesy)
Shahar Zubari
(photo credit: Courtesy)
■ EVEN THOUGH they cooperate on various levels, Israel’s institutions of higher learning are in competition with one another. Currently, the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya can boast about three of its students who are members of the Israel Olympic team competing in Rio de Janeiro. They are windsurfer Shahar Zubari, government; judoka Or Sasson, psychology; and judoka Sagi Muki, economics and business administration.
■ TEL AVIVIANS in their 20s and 30s, especially those who are regulars at the North Central Synagogue at 126 Ben-Yehuda Street, which is headed by Rabbi Shlomo Chayen, can join the Tu Be’av JNFuture Israel day trip to Shiloh, the biblical site of the Tabernacle and the hills in which the festival of Tu Be’av originated.
JNFuture is the gateway for the next generation of active Jewish leadership in the Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund. JNFuture Israel engages, energizes, and empowers young pioneer leaders living in Israel who are committed to Zionism, environmentalism, volunteerism, and community development for the Land of Israel. JNFuture Israel has leadership teams in both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
The tour leaves Tel Aviv at 8:30 a.m. on Friday, August 19, and returns at 4:30 p.m. Participants are asked to bring their own lunches, snacks, sunscreen and water, as well as to wear comfortable shoes and clothing.
The tour includes tastings at the Shiloh-area Gvaot Winery and, if time allows, Tura Winery, and a visit to the Samaria Fire and Rescue Services station which is supported by the JNF. Bus location details will be sent to people who register (at https://JNFutureShiloh.eventbrite.com).
■ NEW IMMIGRANTS from South Africa and Australia who are willing to give of themselves to better the lives of others are invited to contact Dana Ben- Chail, the head of volunteerism, community projects and events at Telfed, the Israel branch of the South African Zionist Federation, which takes care of the needs of South African and Australian immigrants.
Since taking up her position almost a year ago, Ben-Chail has been compiling a nationwide network of volunteers and would-be volunteers. In urban areas in which there are relatively large numbers of South African and Australian immigrants, Telfed has established regional committees whose main function is to welcome new immigrants to the area.
In recent years Telfed has put an emphasis on building a combined community of South Africans and Australians, in the belief that since both groups have a similar cultural background, forming one united community can only benefit both new and veteran immigrants. Even their gold and green national colors are the same, as can be seen at the Olympic Games.
Anyone who would like to be part of what Ben-Chail calls “this volunteering family” is invited to contact her at volunteers@telfed.org.il or (09) 790-7805.
■ ART LOVERS interested in truly contemporary art may care to visit Art Space TLV at 6 Shvil Hameretz Street, Tel Aviv, on Saturday, August 13, at 11:30 a.m.
for a gallery talk and catalogue launch of Rotem Reshef’s Control/Release, a site-specific installation that transforms two-dimensional scrolls of paintings, into a three-dimensional sculptural installation in the gallery’s space.
Reshef’s ongoing engagement with the boundaries of painting, leaving breathing space, probing the dynamics between domination and autonomy, giving freedom of action while also marking the framework, is expressed in the current exhibition, in which the artworks are spread throughout the gallery space in a manner allowing a wide view and examination of the experiential painting process from multiple angles.
Reshef lays out two scrolls of paintings totaling 50 meters in length, in a way that challenges the two-dimensionality of painting. Work commenced in 2012 on the first scroll and continued in 2015 with the second scroll. The work process was created in allotted segments of about four meters of empty canvas pulled out from the rolled-up cylinder. Work on each segment of blank canvas started with only the tail end of the previous painting on that roll sticking out, like writing a journal in installments without peeking at the former entries.
The multiyear work on these two scrolls incorporated different styles and changing rhythms and tonalities, all of which culminate in ambitious, epic sheets of painting that present spectators with painted stops in time.
Viewers are invited to wander through the exhibition space and explore from close up the compositional steps being revealed to them, vis-à-vis both the painting on canvas and the installation as a whole, in the way the scrolls are stretched between the gallery walls.
Reshef, who gravitates between New York and Tel Aviv, recently participated in a group exhibition as part of the 2016 Venice Biennale. Her current exhibition was curated by Sagi Refael.