TEL AVIV.- The exhibition presents selected items from the archive of Walter Benjamin, one of the most prominent philosophers and cultural critics of the 20th century, together with works of art that refer to them.

I don’t have enough time left to write all the letters I had wanted to write.

These are the last words from the hand of Walter Benjamin, written in French. They were composed on September 25, 1940, in Spain.

Even though Benjamin is a central Jewish thinker, and one of the most important and interesting philosophers of our time in the field of contemporary art and literature, his work, somewhat surprisingly, has never appeared in Israel. This exhibition presents archival materials by courtesy of the Walter Benjamin Archive, housed in the Berlin Academy of Arts. These include manuscripts, notes and lists, letters, handwritten fragments, journal entries and postcards.

The Archive materials are divided into eight collections covering: Benjamin's childhood in Berlin; the correspondence he kept up over years with other thinkers of his time, including Theodor Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Bertolt Brecht and others; the Arcades Project that he never managed to complete; work on Kafka's writings; the emotional and convoluted dialogue he pursued with the Jewish philosopher Gershom Scholem (who had made his home in Jerusalem) – about Zionism, the Hebrew language and Judaism; his literary criticism; the postcards and aesthetic impressions that he dispatched from his travels in Europe; and his important writing on history and politics.

Besides these archival materials, the curators decided to display a selection of contemporary art works, revolving around the concept of "image-thinking", linked to how Benjamin sought to invent new forms of interpretation for art and images, to enable them to be in constant movement. The works of the participating artists manifest this kind of thinking.

Among the items exhibited are originals and reproductions side by side, without distinction. The question of reproduction, familiar from Benjamin's thought, receives fresh impetus in this exhibition with its archival materials in German. For the local audience their value lies in the boundaries between art objects, historical documents and cultural testimony.

Guest Curators: Noam Segal, Raphael Zagury-Orly

Participating artists: Paul Klee, Leonor Antunes, Uri Aran, Avner Ben-Gal, Yona Friedman, Haim Steinbach, Yonatan Vinitsky, Dor Guez, Sigal Primor, Eli Petel, Shahar Yahalom, Sarah Ortmeyer, Micha Ullman.

The exhibition is held with the cooperation of the Walter Benjamin Archive and the National Library in Jerusalem.