arts & life

e xh i b i t

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spectives outside of Judaism. Potential Trust
is a neon expression of universal sensitivity.
“Visitors see hammers pounding a nail
into a central wall,” explains the multi-media
artist, 67, whose work is in permanent col-
lections and shown internationally. “When
the nail is in place, there are hammers on the
other side that un-nail the nail.
“When we have an idea, there also is doubt.
There always is the potential of constructing
something and deconstructing. Every time we
do something, we take into account that there
are forces other than ours.”
Very personal perspectives are commu-
nicated through a photographic piece, The
Open Page, which has some disparate cultur-
al content. Shot at a Vancouver public library,
it shows books in the hands of people rank-
ing them as favorites. The books, intricately
crafted and in a restricted collection, are held
by the workers who monitor them.
“I like to show hands because they hold the
hands of others or hold the actions of our bod-
ies that relate to others or objects,” she says.
The Detroit exhibit represents a retrospec-
tive of Shalev-Gerz’s projects over the past 20
years in an effort to open dialogue. Among
the places her creativity has been displayed
are the Jewish Museum in New York,
Moderna Museet in Stockholm and Musee
cantonal des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne.
“The central theme across my work is
about how hard it is to say what we want to
say,” Shalev-Gerz says. “It’s about the ways
people see the world around them and com-
municate so that each viewer can make a
voyage that becomes personal.”

Shalev-Gerz visited the Motor City several
times to plan the layout for the exhibit. While
here, she appreciated the architectural finery
in some of the older, iconic structures, such
as the Fisher and Guardian buildings.
“It was hard to see areas where Detroit has
been dissolving, but I also saw places that
resisted,” she says. “Through my visits, I saw
how the city is slowly turning around.
“So many people came to the exhibit
opening, and there was so much energy. It’s
exciting to have people wanting to talk to me
about each piece and listen to the videos.”
The artist, who will be returning to the
gallery June 18 for another talk, created
three pieces specifically for this display. One
explores the ways video projects are altered
by changes made in a cutting room; the
other two describe a woman forced to sing
at Auschwitz and probes the act of preparing
oneself to die.
Shalev-Gerz’s became insterested in art
while in high school in Jerusalem.
“We had to go to museums,” she says. “I was
flabbergasted that each hall would go through
a complete refurbishing for every exhibition. I
saw new art and contemporary ideas.
“I wanted to speak to the world through
art. I went to the Bezalel Academy of Arts
and Design and did an exhibition in Israel,
where [a stone sculpture] is still standing.”
As her projects expanded, Shalev-Gerz
spent a year in New York and moved to Paris
in 1984. She is married to her third husband,
Dr. Christopher Fleischner. Her daughter,
Ayelet Shalev, is an architect in Seattle.
Although the artist lived religiously for

years while in Israel, she now expresses reli-
gious commitments through the attention
accorded in her work. A monument against
fascism stands in Hamburg as a tall column
inviting people to sign their names in sup-
port of the concept represented.
Shalev-Gerz, who taught for 12 years at
the University of Gothenburg in Sweden,
travels to present workshops and give talks at
art schools and museums.
“I just opened an exhibition in a London
gallery,” she discloses. “For Geneva, the city
of watches, I am doing a double clock for a
public space; it will be like the one shown in
Detroit, where two clock faces are merged
with one moving forward and the other
moving backward.” She also has recently
been commissioned by the University of
British Columbia to do a piece.
Shalev-Gerz divides her time between two
studios, one next to her home in Paris and
one near her summer cabin on Vancouver
Island, where she can be close to nature
while connecting with artists representing
many disciplines. “There are lots of artists
from every part of the world living there,”
she says. “There’s a community that makes a
lot of exchanges of ideas.”

*

details

“Space Between Time” runs through July
9 at Wasserman Projects in Detroit, where
the artist will speak at 3 p.m. Saturday,
June 18. (313) 818-3550;
wassermanprojects.com.

THIS PHOTO: Shalev-Gerz’s
installations at Wasserman
Projects

Art Project

Suzanne Chessler | Contributing Writer

G

ary Wasserman was visiting
Paris when a long-known
artist and a long-known art
dealer separately urged him to see an
exhibition featuring work by Esther
Shalev-Gerz.
Wasserman, a lifelong art collec-
tor always looking for new viewing
opportunities, immediately became
impressed with Shalev-Gerz’s multi-
media pieces and decided to make
his experiences accessible to Metro
Detroiters.
That accessibility resides in his
innovative interdisciplinary venue,
Wasserman Projects, a 5,500-square
foot space located in a former fire-

Gary Wasserman

30 June 2 • 2016

station maintenance building on the
north side of Eastern Market, where
the artist is scheduled to return for a
presentation about her exhibit, “Space
Between Time.” (See adjoining article.)
“I was impressed by the sweep-
ing intellectual insight, content and
emotion [conveyed through] Esther’s
work and the idea of the ‘space
between time’ as the thread that pulls
all of these different works together,”
Wasserman explains, referring to
intervals between hearing and listen-
ing, between seeing and comprehend-
ing and between comprehending and
responding.
“The Jewish element especially con-

nected with me as a Jewish person.
There are several works in the exhibit
that are very steeped in awareness of
the Holocaust and its aftermath.”
Wasserman, a supporter of the
International Institute for Secular
Humanistic Judaism, was particularly
taken with The Imaginary House for
Walter Benjamin, an installation show-
ing viewers the short distance from
the place that had been the pinnacle
of German-Jewish intellectualism to a
place that became the nadir of behav-
ior as enacted at a concentration camp.
Wasserman, CEO of Troy-based
Allied Metals Corp., also feels a tie to
the exhibit subjects because of spend-
ing so much time in Germany, where
the corporation has its European
headquarters.
The decision to open an arts show-
place developed in the summer of
2012, when he noticed an emerging
artistic community in Detroit. The
Detroit native had left the state for

