JERUSALEM.- On December 22, Gordon Gallery's new Jerusalem venue opened its doors. It is an unusual step and the first time that a Tel Aviv-based gallery - one of the oldest and most successful-opens an additional venue in Israel.

Amon Yariv, the gallery's owner, has entertained the idea of opening an additional Jerusalem art space for many years, ever since he was a student in the Department of Photography at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in the city. Jerusalem is not without an artistic scene—from the Israel Museum, through Bezalel and the Hebrew University, to independent artistic initiatives such as Barbur Gallery, Agripas 12, and HaMiffal, but it lacks a commercial gallery featuring the country's leading artists. The new Gordon Gallery enters this lacuna, appealing to Jerusalem art lovers, foreign residents, and visitors, who come to the city and are interested in consuming quality Israeli art, while also striving to inspire art students.

The new venue is located in the Sapir Center industrial area, in the city's southwest, an area reminiscent of the Tel Aviv's Kiryat Hamelacha, which has long been a pilgrimage site for art lovers. It is an area steeped in large industrial buildings, mostly housing light industry, but also several artist studios, yeshivas, as well as Bezalel Academy's ultra-Orthodox branch Oman, located next door to the new gallery, on the third floor of building number 3.

Gordon Gallery was established in Tel Aviv in 1966 by Yeshayahu (Shaya) Yariv. It was named after the first street where it operated—Gordon Street in central Tel Aviv. From the very outset, the gallery worked with the most important and influential artists in the local scene, such as Raffi Lavie, Aviva Uri, Yossef Zaritsky, Uri Lifshitz, Ofer Lellouche, and others.




In 2004, the gallery passed into the hands of Amon Yariv, who has been its director since. It resumed exhibiting local contemporary art exhibitions, becoming one of the most influential commercial galleries in Israel, and the owner of one of the ten largest private collections of Israeli art in Israel. The artists represented by the gallery today include Larry Abramson, Yair Garbuz, Michal Na'aman, Sharon Poliakine, Philip Rantzer, Jan Rauchwerger, Amir Shefet, and Addam Yekutieli (Know Hope). In 2018, the gallery left its old residence on Ben Yehuda Street and moved to HaZarem Street in south Tel Aviv, to a large, open space—a move which is also considered groundbreaking. Next to the main space, at 6 HaPelech Street, the gallery has another venue, as well as a spectacular sculpture garden.

For the past eight months, with the help of Salty Architects, Yariv has been working on the renovation and design of the new space in Jerusalem. The industrial façade has been removed and replaced by large windows, which open the gallery's interior to the outside, bringing the unique, rugged, industrial ambience into the space. The space itself is also accessible and open. It has no threshold areas that visitors are not allowed to enter, much like the large and inviting Tel Aviv venue. According to architects Motti Rauchwerger and Hadar Menkes (Salty Architects), "the challenge was to set the space apart from its surroundings without being ostentatious. Inside the gallery, we designed a circular space, and it is important that one can keep moving in the space and be surprised. One of the surprises was the natural light in this industrial area. Once we opened the façade, we realized that wonderful natural light permeates the space."

The new space launched with two solo exhibitions, presenting works by Ofer Lellouche and Aviva Uri. These will be followed by solo exhibitions for the gallery's artists.

Lellouche's exhibition, "Recent Works," is centered on a monumental bronze sculpture, The Hug, whose wooden-earthen tones blend perfectly with the industrial buildings revealed through the transparent gallery façade. In addition to the sculpture, Lellouche presents nine small reliefs depicting the work process on the sculpture from different angles.

The exhibition "Death in God's Realm" features ten of Aviva Uri's iconic works, dating from the 1960s until her death in 1984. Considered by many the Great Mother of Israeli art, Uri's paintings have outlined a mental, spiritual, and metaphysical position for generations of male and female artists.