Michal Rovner:Pragim
Michal Rovner: Pragim 540 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001 March 8 – April 18, 2024 Photography courtesy Pace Gallery
New York – Pace is pleased to present an exhibition of works by Michal Rovner at its 540 West 25th Street gallery in New York. Which opened on March 8th and will be on view until the April 18, the show, titled Pragim—the Hebrew word for Poppies—will feature prints, video works, and installations from a series the artist started in 2019. Over the last five years, as part of this long-term project, Rovner has filmed and drawn wild poppies that grow in her field in Israel.
Pragim- 2 (detail), 2024 PRINT archival pigment print 80-1/4" × 50" × 2" (203.8 cm × 127 cm × 5.1 cm), framed No. 90459.01 © Michal Rovner / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
For more than 30 years, Rovner’s practice has centered on universal questions of the human condition—bringing issues of identity, place, and dislocation to the fore. The poppy—which carries different associations and meanings around the world—embodies both fragility and fortitude, as well as memorial and loss. The ongoing war has impacted the artist’s perspective on her Pragim works, as they now also powerfully reflect the state of unrest and anguish afflicting the region. Using a dark palette of black, gray, and red, the artist imbues her human-scale staccato swaying poppies with harsh and tragic qualities.
Michal Rovner: Pragim 540 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001 March 8 – April 18, 2024 Photography courtesy Pace Gallery
Working across drawing, printmaking, video, sculpture, and installation, the artist often obscures identifying details and specifics of time and place in her layered compositions, creating abstract yet resonant reflections of reality and the human experience. One of her most famous projects is Makom (Place), a series of monumental cubic structures composed of stones of dismantled or destroyed Israeli and Palestinian homes from Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Haifa, the Galilee, and the border between Israel and Syria.
Pragim-3, 2024 PRINT archival pigment print 80-1/4" × 50" × 2" (203.8 cm × 127 cm × 5.1 cm), framed No. 90460.01 © Michal Rovner / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
The Makom series echoes conflicts in the past and present. Working with Israeli and Palestinian masons, Rovner addresses the possibility of creating together, in a shared experience of reconstructing and rebuilding.
Red Light, 2024 VIDEO LCD screen 74-13/16" × 42-1/2" × 5-3/8" (190 cm×108cm×13.7cm) No. 91051.01 © Michal Rovner / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Michal Rovner (b. 1957, Tel Aviv, Israel) works with drawing, printmaking, video, sculpture, and installation to reflect on the continuum of human experience. Her work shifts constantly between the poetic and the political, using imagery that invokes the fragility of existence, identity, dislocation, and time. Generally avoiding direct representation of specific issues or events, Rovner reinterprets the present and historical memory. She records and erases visual information, obscuring specifics of time and place through gestural, abstract qualities. For immediate release Important historic exhibitions and installations of her work include Michal Rovner: The Space Between, Whitney Museum of American Art (2002); Against Order? Against Disorder?, Venice Biennale (2003); Incidental Affairs, Suntory Museum, Osaka (2009); Michal Rovner: Histoires, Musée du Louvre, Paris (2011); and Michal Rovner: Transitions, Canary Wharf, London (2019). Rovner’s work resides in numerous public collections worldwide including The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Paris Audiovisuel, France (Collection of the City of Paris); and The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel, among others.
Pace is a leading international art gallery representing some of the most influential contemporary artists and estates from the past century, holding decades-long relationships with Alexander Calder, Jean Dubuffet, Barbara Hepworth, Agnes Martin, Louise Nevelson, and Mark Rothko. Pace enjoys a unique U.S. heritage spanning East and West coasts through its early support of artists central to the Abstract Expressionist and Light and Space movements.
Since its founding by Arne Glimcher in 1960, Pace has developed a distinguished legacy as an artist-first gallery that mounts seminal historical and contemporary exhibitions. Under the current leadership of CEO Marc Glimcher, Pace continues to support its artists and share their visionary work with audiences worldwide by remaining at the forefront of innovation. Now in its seventh decade, the gallery advances its mission through a robust global program— comprising exhibitions, artist projects, public installations, institutional collaborations, performances, and interdisciplinary projects. Pace has a legacy in art bookmaking and has published over five hundred titles in close collaboration with artists, with a focus on original scholarship and on introducing new voices to the art historical canon.
Today, Pace has seven locations worldwide, including European footholds in London and Geneva as well as Berlin, where the gallery established an office in 2023. Pace maintains two galleries in New York—its headquarters at 540 West 25th Street, which welcomed almost 120,000 visitors and programmed 20 shows in its first six months, and an adjacent 8,000 sq. ft. exhibition space at 510 West 25th Street. Pace’s long and pioneering history in California includes a gallery in Palo Alto, which was open from 2016 to 2022. Pace’s engagement with Silicon Valley’s technology industry has had a lasting impact on the gallery at a global level, accelerating its initiatives connecting art and technology as well as its work with experiential artists. Pace consolidated its West Coast activity through its flagship in Los Angeles, which opened in 2022. Pace was one of the first international galleries to establish outposts in Asia, where it operates permanent gallery spaces in Hong Kong and Seoul, along with an office and viewing room in Beijing. In spring 2024, Pace will open its first gallery space in Japan in Tokyo’s new Azabudai Hills development.
For more information about this exhibition and others, please visit the Pace Gallery’s website here. Pace Gallery can be found on Instagram and Artsy, too.
