February, 16. – April, 1. 2018.
Open: 7 days a week except Monday 10a.m.- 8 p.m.
Temporary exhibitions (1st and 2nd floors)
Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art – District, IX. 1. Komor Marcell Street -Budapest
Guided tours in English language.
The exhibition presents recent works by Rafael Yossef Herman known for creating his work with the hidden existence of the night’s darkness.
By observing this large-scale photographic installation, the Israel-born artist’s representation of the nocturnal world may look like daylight to the viewer. Encapsulating or imaginary realities Herman examines the limits of surrealism and timeless reality. In a sense he is researching virtually.
Virtual realities, games, simulations that are so influential to the present let us seek into areas unknown to the human eye. The night landscapes shot by Herman do not exist for our eyes. These strange lights of the night normally can only be perceived by technology.
Compared to the experience of the real daylight, we perceive odd shadows, moonlight features, color spectrum and shimmering details that differ from sunlight. Rafael Y. Herman strives to create a new reality out of the mystery of the night. He highlights the fact that although the night landscape is close to us, its reality does not exist for the observer. These sites never existed for the human eye, just snapshots, insights into another reality. Curator: Attila Nemes.
“Rafael Y. Herman was born in 1974 in Be’er Sheva, Israel. The winner of the Prague Photosphere Award in 2015, Herman began studying classical music at the age of six, becoming a percussionist in Philharmonic orchestras, ensembles and rock bands. Following a long stay in New York City, he studied at the School of Economics and Management at the University of Tel Aviv. Graduating in 2000, he moved to Latin America, taking a long research trip in seven countries: photographing Cuban musicians, the Carnival of Bahia and the Zapatistas in Mexico, working with Amnesty International in Paraguay, then studying painting in Mexico City and Chile and becoming part of an artists’ commune. This visual apprenticeship combines vision, metropolitan experience and encounters with uncontaminated nature. In 2003, Herman moved to Milan, showing the project “Bereshit- Genesis” at Palazzo Reale, a project created with a method of his own devising: nocturnal photography without electronic aids or digital manipulation, revealing what cannot normally be seen by the naked eye. This exhibition launched Herman into the international art scene. His works are in prominent public and private collections, including the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Salsali Private Museum of Dubai and MAXXI national museum, Italy. Herman’s recent solo exhibition in the magnificent Testaccio pavilion of MACRO museum in Rome claimed great international attention and marked the largest exhibition of the artist prior to the Ludwig Museum solo Exhibition in Budapest. Rafael Y. Herman is an invited artist of Ville de Paris at La Cité Internationale des Arts and currently works and lives in Paris.”
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue.
Update Aggie Reiter
Rolling in Budapest 