“The Song of Corals: A Summer Exhibition in Israel”
Being in Eilat without being there: “The Song of Corals” is an exhibition that combines science and art. The exhibition presents Guetta’s work “Parallel Universe”, created especially for this exhibition and designed to enrich the visitor experience alongside scientific collection pieces, great photographs and information collected over decades of scientific research.
Guetta’s installation, consisting of thousands of objects, corresponds to the coral world and is characterized by the beauty, shape and texture of the coral reef. The exhibition is shown in the museum’s temporary exhibitions gallery and is open to the public of museum visitors. The exhibition invites visitors to experience and be surprised by the underwater world, observe the beauty of the coral reef and marvel at the complexity and uniqueness of this important habitat that is usually hidden from our eyes.
Learn about the fascinating life story of stony corals
The coral reef is a complex ecosystem full of animals and movement, constantly forming and changing due to the interrelationships between the creatures that inhabit it and long-term evolutionary processes. According to Dr. Nega Sokolovar, the scientific curator, “the exhibition brings into focus the fascinating life history of the stony corals, the way they slowly and steadily build the reef over thousands of years while facing threats, dangers and countless disturbances. Understanding the basic biological processes that form the complex fabric of life in the reef reveals to us the severe damage that has been done to the stony corals and the reef as a whole in recent years, and makes us realize why and how we must preserve this unique habitat. The Natural History Museum has a Center for the Study of Marine Biodiversity, and the exhibition was created based on the existing knowledge at the Marine Center, with many of the images in the exhibition based on Dr. Tom Schlesinger, a museum researcher and award-winning nature photographer.
“Discover fascinating and meditative beauty”
The installation “Parallel Universe” invites visitors into a space where the boundaries between the natural and the artificial are blurred. Guetta’s work reiterates and emphasizes the connection between art, design and science. According to curator Limor Margolis, “the installation was created as a reflection on the complexity, beauty and fragility of the underwater world – a parallel world, hidden from view, secret and seductive, where unique creatures, breathtaking landscapes and fascinating natural phenomena exist.”
The work is a beating heart in the center of a space. Exhibition visitors are invited to enter it, move around in it, become part of it and discover a fascinating and meditative beauty, similar to diving into the depths of the sea among coral reefs.” Guetta’s work process on this installation lasted about two and a half years and included meetings with scientists and the curators of the Natural History Museum’s collections. The installation, specially prepared for exhibition in the museum, consisted of thousands of small parts, textile sculptures with homogeneous organic textures, created by handwork and creative processes whose complexity corresponds to the formation of coral reefs. Fabric is the basis of Guetta’s creation, to which he adds advanced scientific developments that he created and which have been registered as international patents.
The work highlights the importance and uniqueness of coral reefs and the processes of life creation in the face of the threat of extinction and death and aims to encourage visitors to preserve the reefs for the future.
“Art and design make knowledge accessible and enrich the experience”
The director of the Steinhardt Museum of Nature, Alon Span: “The Museum of Nature continues to develop the connection between science, culture and art. Our goal is to bring the world of science and nature closer to visitors in a variety of ways, with art and design making knowledge accessible and enriching the experience. The original idea for an exhibition combining science and art came from a meeting with Tzuri Guetta at the Israeli art fair “Trei Color” in 2019, where he presented a sculpture by Almog Malbin. Since then, we have been developing the idea of how to tell the story of the reefs and the danger they face, but also bring the audience closer to the beauty and power of the underwater world of corals.
Guetta, an Israeli artist with international recognition and success, has been working on his work in the underwater world of corals for years.” Artist and designer Tzuri Guetta: “The sea was our playground, and as a child growing up in Givat Olga, it awakened in me a curiosity for new textures. Choosing coral as a source of inspiration was an unconscious decision, I’m not sure if I chose it or it chose me. The decision to exhibit in Israel is the completion of a circle – an exhibition that is a retrospective of nature. This is a photo sequence of everything I received from nature at my time – ‘the generous coral’. In the current time, the exhibition offers diving underwater while the waves confuse us.”
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