A cabinet exhibition of the Münchner Stadtmuseum

We cordially invite you to the opening of the cabinet exhibition at the Munich City Museum on Thursday, 30 March 2023, at 6 pm. At 6.30 p.m. Nicola Borgmann, Architekturgalerie München, will lead a discussion with the artist Eli Singalovski.

Münchner Stadtmuseum  Sankt-Jakobs-Platz 1  80331 München

As in many other countries Brutalism and an expressive use of exposed concrete dominated Israeli architecture from the 1950s to the late 1970s. Today many of the buildings from this period are viewed critically or with a certain amount of disdain by the general public and as a result are threatened with demolition. The Israeli photographer and media artist Eli Singalovski has taken on the task of photographically capturing the raw beauty and richness of form of these buildings in Munich's twin city Be'er Sheva as well as in other cities in Israel. The utopian founding spirit combined with the concrete aesthetic in the construction of Israel is omnipresent in his photographs.

Singalovski presents the inanimate brutalist buildings centred in dramatic black and white shots with no visible human activity. The long night-time exposures draw the focus towards the futuristic structures their richness in details and the unique plasticity of the architecture.

"I wanted to leave out anything unimportant. I wanted to detach the buildings from their surroundings in night shots against the black sky," Eli Singalovski elaborates. "The viewer should be able to concentrate entirely on the structure and its many details." Staged in this way the individual buildings reveal their highly individual character. "The basic idea behind it was to present the building as much as possible like a portrait - a building portrayed in a studio. Like when you photograph a person in a studio against a black background."

Eli Singalovski is a fellow in the Artist in Residence Munich programme at Ebenböckhaus, Landeshauptstadt München, from January to March 2023.

With the kind support of Artis