The annual Lauren & Mitchell Presser Contemporary Art Grant aims to promote artistic excellence. Reflecting the complexity of local society and culture, it encourages polyphonic artistic expression and supports museological endeavor in Israel. It is awarded every year to help realize a solo exhibition by a local artist, selected by the donors from the museum’s annual exhibition program.
Izabella Volovnik is the recipient of the Lauren & Mitchell Presser Contemporary Art Grant for 2024, in support of her planned exhibition at the Museum
Photo by Tanch Bolotnikov
The annual Lauren & Mitchell Presser Contemporary Art Grant aims to promote contemporary artistic excellence in Israel. Reflecting the complexity of local society and culture, it encourages polyphonic artistic expression and supports the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art’s endeavor. It is awarded every year to help realize a solo exhibition by a local artist, selected by the donors from the museum’s annual exhibition program.
Izabella Volovnik is a multidisciplinary artist, with a bachelor’s degree in art from Hamidrasha School of Art at Beit Berl College. Volovnik’s work has been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries in Israel and around the world. Her works are included in museum collections, including the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and Haifa Museum of Art.
Volovnik’s exhibition Three Scratch Marks and a Love Letter, curated by Ilanit Konopny and Aya Lurie, presents a labyrinthine world that extends between imaginary domestic spaces and local landscapes, in complex dialogue with images from art history and her own immediate environment. Her works engage with representations of femininity entwined with those of the animal kingdom in various cultures and languages; explore demonization and dehumanization as covert empowerment or alternative positions of power; and pose questions about hierarchy, power relations, sexuality, and violent desires—in society, culture, and the soul.
Out of the oil paintings, charcoal drawings, and sculptures featured in the show emerge a variety of figures of young women and girls, bears, horses, leopards, dogs and bitches, as well as monsters, demons and objects, some functional, some sharp and dangerous. At the heart of the exhibition space stands a sculptural object inspired by a war-game table that functions as a three-dimensional painting, expanding on the relationships between figures, objects, and their environments.
Batia Kolton and Roni Fahima are the recipients of the The Lauren & Mitchell Presser Contemporary Art Grant for 2024
Roni Fahima photo by Tzur Kotzer | Batia Kolton photo by Nina Solnik
Kolton and Fahima are illustrators and comic artists, create animation and sets for cinema and theater, teach illustration and work in textile. Their joint activity began as part of their master’s degree studies in design in Shenkar, after each of them had developed an independent career. Kolton (b. 1967, Israel) is a faculty member and head of the Illustration Program in the Department of Visual Communication at Shenkar, and a lecturer in visual culture for children in the master’s degree in Tel Aviv University’s MA program in Child and Youth Culture Research. She was a member of the comics group Actos (1996-2010), and received the Ministry of Culture’s design award for 2003 and 2018. Fahima (b. 1978, Israel) is a lecturer in the Department of Visual Communication at Shenkar. She initiated and edited scrawl, a digital magazine for illustration and comics, collaborated with the Inbal Pinto And Avshalom Pollak Dance Company, and published the graphic novel Mr. Ewing.
Kolton and Fahima’s forthcoming exhibition at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art (July 2023) examines the role of image and story in textiles through thread-based objects that combine different textile mechanics (weaving, knitting, tapestry, doll-making) and touch on legends and myths in which textile crafts play a symbolic or allegorical role.
The name of the exhibition, Monkey at the Loom, is drawn from a Syrian legend, in which a monkey is forced to learn to weave as its owner makes it clear what its fate will be should he not acquire this skill. The stories on which Kolton and Fahima draw – by the Grimm Brothers, S.Y. Agnon, from Norse mythology and more – allow them to expand their perspective and research, both on textiles and on storytelling.
Ben Hagari is the recipient of the 2022 Lauren & Mitchell Presser Contemporary Art Grant
Ben Hagari (b. 1981, Tel Aviv, lives and works in New York) holds a B.Ed. from Hamidrasha School of Art, Beit Berl College, Israel (2008) and an MFA from Columbia University, New York (2014). His work has been exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions at the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts (2016); Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv (2016); and Fundación Calosa, Mexico (2021). In addition, he has participated in group exhibitions at venues including The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; SculptureCenter, New York; High Line Art, New York; Whitechapel Gallery, London; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Krakow; and KIT, Düsseldorf.
Hagari is the recipient of several awards and fellowships, including the Israel Ministry of Culture Prize in Art (2011); the Foundation for Contemporary Art Grant (2021); the Chami Fruchter Award for an Emerging Video Artist (2016); and the New York State Council on the Arts Grant (2021). Hagari headed the Video Department at Hamidrasha School of Art, Beit Berl College (2009–12) and is currently teaching at Yale University, Connecticut and at the School of Visual Arts, New York.
The exhibition On Point is scheduled to open at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art in January 2023. In the exhibition, Hagari – as curator and artist – contemplates handmade moving images as subject, form, and worldview. The exhibition is the result of his ongoing research into the history and mechanisms of the moving image. It includes new video works, created by Hagari especially for this exhibition and on view for the first time, alongside a display of contemporary works by various artists and historical pieces from archives and collections.
Hagari’s new video works are a further extension of his artistic practice, which dissolves the boundaries between reality and imagination; between theatrical illusion and an exposé of what happens behind the scenes and the many artificial devices – makeup, props, sets, and cinematic manipulations – used to conjure up wondrous, unique worlds.
One of Hagari’s new video works, On Point, follows the life of a single pencil, from its manufacturing process to its anthropomorphization. The film opens at a gray pencil factory, following the production of a graphite pencil. Later, the pencil comes to life, human-sized, meets a girl and they start dancing. Parts of the film were shot at the last remaining pencil manufacturing company in “Pencil City” Shelbyville, Tennessee, USA. Through this obsolete object, the film observes the disappearance of handwriting and manual production, as they are replaced by new means in an increasingly digital world. The title of the video, and of the exhibition, On Point, a play on the notion of a sharp pencil, seeks to endow the pencil with an individual life and voice.
Maya Aroch is the recipient of the 2022 Lauren & Mitchell Presser Contemporary Art Grant
Photo: David Chaki
Maya Aroch (b. 1988, Givatayim, lives and works in Tel Aviv) is an interdisciplinary artist, who focuses in the medium of drawing, sculpture and installation. She gained her BFA from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem (2014) and a B.Ed. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2015), participated in an exchange program at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna (2013) and nowadays is a student at the Interdisciplinary Program of The Tel Aviv Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis (2023). She held solo shows at The Artists’ Studios Gallery, Tel Aviv (2017) and Bezalel Artist Wall, Jerusalem (2015), and in 2022 will present a solo show at Herzliya Museum for Contemporary Art. In addition, her work has been exhibited in duo and group exhibitions, in venues including MOBY – Museum of Bat Yam (2019), Studio Bank, Tel Aviv (2020), Alfred Institute, Tel Aviv (2019), Barbur Gallery, Jerusalem (2017), Alfred Kern Turm, Pforzheim, Germany (2017), FridayExit Gallery, Vienna (2013). She participated in residencies, among others Arteles, Finland (2010) and Arad Art and Architecture, Arad (2017)
Marik Lechner is the recipient of the Lauren & Mitchell Presser Contemporary Art Grant
Photo: Nomy Borstein
Marik Lechner was born in 1967 in Ukraine, immigrated to Israel with his family in 1973, and lives and works in Be’er Ya’akov. Lechner graduated with highest honours from HaMidrasha School of Arts in 2001. He has had solo shows at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv; and Feinkunst Krüger Gallery, Hamburg among others, and has participated in group exhibitions in Germany, Latvia and Israel.
Lechner is known for his expressive oil paintings and drawings. His new exhibition, “Book of Changes”, to be presented at Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, will feature huge tapestries, woven in a technique that combines the use of an electric tufting gun, acrylic paints, glued objects, and varying degrees of unraveling. The soft woolen tapestries, spectacular in their vivid colors and dense richness of images, recount an epic apocalyptic tale of dynamic visions of life cycles under existential threat: terror, seduction, passion, growth, annihilation, and loss.
Michal Mamit Worke
Recipient of the 2020 Lauren & Mitchell Presser Contemporary Art Grant
Photo: Magad Guzani
Born in 1982, Ethiopia, immigrated to Israel in 1984, lives and works in Tel Aviv.
Mamit-Worke is a graduate of the Department of Art at Shenkar College, Ramat Gan (2013), and also studied painting with Israel Hirschberg, Aram Gershuni, and in the Art program at the Naggar School of Photography in Musrara, Jerusalem. Her work has featured at solo and group exhibitions, including the Eretz-Israel Museum, Tel Aviv; the Artists’ House, Tel Aviv; and the Artists’ House, Jerusalem. She is the recipient of the 2019 Miron Sima Prize for the Visual Arts.
Vered Aharonovitch
Recipient of the 2019 Lauren & Mitchell Presser Contemporary Art Grant
Photo by: Michael Liran
Born in 1980, in Bnei Yehuda, lives and works in Tel Aviv.
Aharonovitch is a graduate of the BA program at the Department of Art at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem (2004), and of the Masters of Arts program at the University of Haifa (2009). Her work has been exhibited at numerous solo and group exhibitions, including at The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art. She has won the Ministry of Culture Young Artist Award, and grants from Mifal Hapayis and the Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts. She is one of the founding members of the cooperative Hanina Gallery in Tel Aviv.
Gaston Zvi Ickowicz
Recipient of the 2018 Lauren & Mitchell Presser Contemporary Art Grant
Photo by: Oz Barak
Born 1974, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Immigrated to Israel in 1980. Lives in Neve Ilan, works in Tel Aviv.
Ickowicz graduated with honors in Photography at the Naggar School of Photography in Musrara, Jerusalem in 2000, and in 2009 graduated from the Advanced Studies Program of the Bezalel School of Arts and Design. His photographs have been exhibited at numerous exhibitions in Israel and abroad, including at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; and the Haifa Museum of Art. He has won many awards, including the Israel Museum’s Gérard Lévy Prize for a Young Photographer (2008), and the Israel Ministry of Culture Young Artist Award (2010). His works focus on landscapes, human portraits, and the interactions between them, in social and political contexts.
