| Mr. Shimon Peres at
refusalon
|
Mr. Shimon
Peres,the former prime minister of Israel, has been in the Bay area
on a 2 day trip gathering support for the Peres Center for  Peace
in Tel Aviv. The Center aims to promote Israeli and Palestinian economic
ties with specific emphasis on growth in the Palestinian economy. This
is borne of the recognition that a strong Palestinian economy is an
essential part of any peace settlement. The Center, established one
year ago, has fifty projects underway. Peres was a guest of honor at
the house of the Israeli Consul. Danny Shek and the cultural attaché,
Marie Shek. After seeing Izhar Patkin’s new book on his hosts'
desk, he flipped through the book and found that Patkin was holding
an exhibition in San Francisco’s Refusalon gallery. He decided
to pay an impromptu visit to the gallery, spawning a sudden flurry of
security activity and blocking the street. A host of secret agents descended
on Shmulik Krampf’s gallery in Hawthorne Street shortly followed
by the stream of cars carrying the Peres party, causing the street to
be blocked.
The existing guests at the
gallery, who were attending a private party for the opening of the
exhibition, were astounded by the sudden arrival of the esteemed guest.
Patkin explained his trademark technique of stenciling, cutting, weaving,
folding and bending the paper into a magnificent exploration of his
Judenporzellan. Peres was taken by the technique and story
which is a narrative of the Mendelssohn Peres, who had listened to the motivation for the exhibit, became an immediate collector when Patkin presented him with a piece from the exhibition. The security agents, who had been watching Peres’s back carefully as he toured around the exhibition, now watched nervously as the piece was wrapped. Patkin employs the Mendelssohn paradoxical legacy to raise the dilemma of creativity and politics in our time; the chance meeting of these two men being a poignant example of Patkin’s vision. |
|
family, a Jewish family in Berlin around 1769 that had been forced
to buy low quality over-priced porcelain before receiving permits
of any kind. Moses Mendelssohn, the patriarch, involuntarily became
the owner of 20 porcelain monkeys. He also voluntarily became an advocate
of equal rights, a progressive thinker and the father of Jewish emancipation.
From the mid 18th century, the Mendelssohn family had a
critical impact on Berlin and contributed greatly to European thinking
and culture. They were philosophers, authors, composers, people of
enormous talents who believed that social conformity, tolerance and
creative contribution to high culture could end discrimination and
persecution.