2020 – כח העיתים

“There is a time and season for everything

and a season for every activity under the heavens.

A time to be born and a time to die

A time to plant and a time to uproot

A time to kill and a time to heal….

A time for war and a time for peace…”

Kohelet 3 1-8

The lifetime of man is full of ups and downs, moments of awesome beauty, growth and happiness, and also difficult moments of pain, disappointment and grief. It seems as if the book of Kohelet is counting 14 pairs of opposite times, but the truth is that Shlomo Hamelech counts 28 power times – כ”ח(Koach – Power) according to the Hebrew numerical value – that create together one simple unity.

The annual exhibition of the Start Art School, reflects a creative process that took a full year of searching and expressing these powerful and opposing moments in life, that merge together to create a harmony. Life teaches us to embrace the different, the broken, the unexpected, to embrace the difficult moments, not less that moments of joy.

Every work contains opposites and harmony – and this is the true power.

All humanity went through challenging times in 2020.  All of us had to cope with changing plans and structure, while upholding at the same time basic values of respect, responsibility and creativity.

This exhibition was created in the days of lockdown and quarantine, when all the artists had to cope with their own personal challenges, and with the insecurity of what will be, and this by itself was one of the expressions of the power of time.

The visitors of the exhibition are invited to challenge themselves in finding the opposites and the unification and peace hidden in the art pieces. And beyond that every visitor is invited to introspect – to search inside one’s soul, and find the contradicting powers that pull us in different directions, and to ask ourselves, how, in the depth of depths, these contradictions unite to one simple unity.

Dr. Nurit Sirkis Bank