Hi there,
Nassima Landau is a new and ambitious platform that aims to empower and impact the Tel Aviv contemporary art scene, by showcasing emerging and established International artists. Nassima Landau will act as a foundation identifying and supporting artists with outstanding talent, quality, and promising market value, while engaging in activities yielding financial support. Its innovative program includes exhibitions, site-specific installations and one-time events of the highest standard in its new art space located in the center of Tel Aviv.
The project is a result of a partnership between Steeve Nassima and Suzanne Landau. Steeve’s successful years as both an avid collector and active supporter of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, teamed with Suzanne’s extensive experience and knowledge in international contemporary art, as former Director and Chief Curator of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and former Chief Curator of Fine Arts at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, offers a unique opportunity. They share an open-minded approach to the unexpected – a connection that translates into often shared, unspoken understandings.
FIRST EXHIBITION - 'HIGH VOLTAGE'
Nassima Landau is pleased to present 'HIGH VOLTAGE', its first exhibition celebrating the inauguration of the project’s new art space at the heart of Tel-Aviv.
WHEN: 24 Nov 2020 – 16 Jan 2021
WHERE: Nassima-Landau 55 Ahad Ha’am street – Tel Aviv, Israel
This major exhibition features 35 works by 15 promising artists, some newly emerging, others more established, while almost all of them are exhibiting in Israel for the first time. They all breathe new life into figurative painting, pushing the boundaries of what figuration can mean, often turning to and reinventing historical subjects, current events and comics as sources of imagery and inspiration. The exhibition offers just a glimpse to how much the world has changed for figurative artists, and for those who choose to use painting as a highly subjective medium. Its tactile layers of pigment, form and references create narratives, that are open to ambiguous interpretations and ultimately to new inventions. Most of the works included in the show were created especially for this exhibition.
'HIGH VOLTAGE' features work by Henni Alftan, Derek Aylward, Jonathan Edelhuber, Marley Freeman, Christopher Hartmann, Jammie Holmes, Danielle Orchard, Woody de Othello, Hilary Pecis, Gideon Rubin, Lise Stoufflet, Nirit Takele, Ann Toebbe, and Guy Yanai.
PROJECT FOUNDERS
Steeve Nassima
Steeve Nassima is a long-standing art collector and advisor with several years of experience in the business world, lending him an edge when dealing with the often complex and highly competitive art world.
It all started when as a student in his early 20’s, Steeve took on a side job as a real estate broker. After closing his first deal, during which he sold a house to a lovely Japanese diplomat, he asked himself how to invest that money wisely whilst also enjoy spending it. This led him to his first acquisition: a photograph by Japanese artist Nobuyoshi Araki. Steeve was 21, but his approach, from the very outset, was to make sure that he was buying things he liked, and at the same time—that he was investing in a focused way. It wasn't his best acquisition of course, but he still owns the work, enjoys seeing it every day, and the €3,000 spent then are worth quite a lot more today. Steeve spent 25 years in the business world during which he continued to collect art with focus and determination.
In 2014 he took a well thought decision to remove himself from the daily management of his business and focus on collecting art, art advising and supporting in multiple ways the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
Is it a coincidence that his first artwork was by a Japanese artist? As a collector, Steeve is attracted to artists who can move him into their world and open his eyes to another reality. Japanese artists, perhaps due to their conservative, high pressured society, live and express themselves often in a bold and fascinating way through their art. These qualities initially led him to collect artists such as Yayoi Kusama. Kusama was and still remains his first love with an extensive collection of various artworks. Today Steeve can claim to be an expert of anything related to her 70 years career with a privileged access to the most unique of her works.
Suzanne Landau
Former Director and Chief Curator of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the Chief Curator of Fine Arts at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Landau lives and breathes contemporary art. While establishing and building the contemporary art department in Jerusalem, Landau identified and acquired works by that time young artists who were just at the beginning of their career and therefore in a low-price category, such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Damien Hirst and Maurizio Cattelan among others.
During her time as the Curator of Contemporary Art since 1982 and the Chief Curator since 1998 Landau curated a large number of group and solo exhibitions, among them Anselm Kiefer (1984), New York Now (Peter Halley, Jeff Koons, Sherrie Levine, Allan McCollum, Peter Nagy, Haim Steinbach, 1987), Christian Boltanski (1989), Life-Size (1990), Gerhard Richter (1995), Marks (1996), Still-Moving (2010), William Kentridge (curator in-charge, 2011), Beyus/Kantor(with Jaromir Jedlinsky,2012), as well as was in charge of site-specific projects in the Museum sculpture garden of Richard Serra, James Turrell, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Sol Lewitt, and Mark Dion. Landau led the Fine Arts Wing in the flagship renewal project of the Museum, accomplished in 2010.
Following her appointment as the Director and Chief Curator of the Tel Aviv Museum in 2012, Landau initiated numerous exhibitions including artists like Absalon, David Claerbout, Fiona Tan, Michael Borremans, Elmgreen & Dragset, Alina Szapocznikow, Taryn Simon, R. H. Quaytman, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and launched site specific projects in the Museum’s Light Fall of Douglas Gordon, Joanna Vasconselos and Ibrahim Mahama among others. Landau curated exhibitions of Ydessa Hendeles, Christian Marclay, The Clock, Louise Bourgeois Twosome (with Jerry Gorovoy), and Modern Times, Masterpieces from the Philadelphia Museum.
Landau established Contemporary Art Department, Museum Friends and Volunteers organizations, initiated acquisition group of Israeli art, new branding of the Museum, the renewal projects of the sculpture garden and of the Museum’s main historical building, which included its facade, new entrance hall, Museum shop, the Nazarian Family Experimental Center and the Studio cafe open to the sculpture garden. She concluded her directorship at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in December 2018, while the Museum reached over one million visitors for the first time.
Best,
Talma