“PASSAGES Words for Mankind across the Jewish Culture” exhibition

31 August - 14 December 2014
Up to 11 Jenuary 2015
Museo Tattile Statale Omero, Mole Vanvitelliana, Ancona

Extra-sensorial exhibition by Andrea Sòcrati.

PASSAGES is a significant extra-sensorial exhibition inviting visitors to actively participate by undertaking a journey through the immensely rich and ancient Jewish culture. In this respect by re-discovering another dimension away from our daily rationalization thereby entering – if only just for a moment - an enchanted world
The Western Wall or KOTEL in Hebrew, or the Wailing Wall, is a most sacred place for Jeusalem and for Israel. Jewish people go there to pray and to make wishes but also to express the most profound and private thoughts.

According to Pavel Florensky, this is where the WORD turns to magical power and allows the deepest human aspirations of man. This is where the WORD becomes the threshold, the entry, the place of encounter between the physical and spirituality, between what is human and what is divine. This is where the WORD, no longer just logo, becomes pragmatism. Fact, gesture, body and perception flow through all of our senses.

PSALMS remind us that words can be TOUCHED besides being heard; "My hands reach out towards your words". One can also TASTE words; "How sweet are your words", "They taste sweeter than wine". Words can be SMELLED; "Be that my prayer, like incense, rise up to you". Words can be SEEN; "Light on my steps" and "your words are like light on my footpath".
Words of humanity and of the soul are constantly repeated, sung, rythmically performed and are thus entrusted to the Wall. Written messages are also deposited with extreme care inside the Wall's crevices. This stone wall has been allowed to resist time and destruction and has become true memory, capable of listening and "feeling" as if possessing a heart and sensibility.
An Israeli popular song says; “These are stones close to peoples' hearts". "Walls have ears" is apparently and old Hebrew expression - "la'kotel oznaym" surely refers to the Western Wall.

In this exhibition Andrea Sòcrati has recreated a "wall" consisting of a significant cloth patchwork. Far from being a gate or closure or opposition, it is welcoming and inviting to
visitors who can walk right through it and thus perform a metaphorical or spiritual voyage.
And as NOVALIS claims, one enters "Lux Ex-Tenebris" and finds oneself temporarily in another ethical, esthetic, beautiful dimension. And this is where the WORDS of mankind recover all their spaciousness, if only just for a moment, then re-immerging back into what Heidegger called "calculating thinking" which is the technical apparatus we all use that includes convergant thinking, publicity slogans, routine and homologation.
It would be necessary to try to achieve a true difficult personal revolution, seeking freedom so as to be able to turn around all daily values. It would be necessary to enter into the "Fourth Dimension", to reverse the whole world, allowing for dreaming space, imagination and disinterested casual encounters.
This is what MARC CHAGALL, a great Jewish artist tried to teach us with his amazing art production. He wrote “If I have painted a cow with her head cut of upside down, or if I have painted an entire picture upside down, it is not because I wanted to "create" litterature ! What I tried was to provoke a psychic choc, a highly immaginative reaction, in other words - a Fourth Dimension”.
The mystical spiritual strength of the Wall are present in Andrea Sòcrati's sculptures made in terracotta and chalk. Another series are thermal photographies with relief. There are other creations present that interpret the fantastic spiritual visionary world of CHAGALL.

Four artists from Jerusalem have their work on display: CHANA CROMER, RUTH SCHREIBER, NETA ALKAYAN and ANDI ARNOVITZ. Thanks to them we will get a feeling of the country, the sounds and the mood of Israel.

Two important artists: FRANCESCO COLONNELLI and GIULIETTA GHELLER, both from this very Marche Region, will be present and further enrich the exhibition's theme. Each artist will have developed a work for MUSEO OMERO and will present their work during specific encounters.

Info

Opeing times: Tuesday to Saturday 4 pm - 7 pm; Sunday and public holidays 10 am - 1 pm and 4 pm - 7 pm.
Groups can book visits outwith the usual opening times.
Closed: Mondays, 25 and 31 December.
Admission: Free.
English-speaking guide available - please request when booking your visit.

Museo Tattile Statale Omero
Banchina Giovanni da Chio 28
60121 Ancona
tel. 071 28 11935 - fax 071 28 18 358
email: info@museoomero.it