FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
THE CONTEMPORARY JEWISH MUSEUM PRESENTS
NIGHT BEGINS THE DAY:
RETHINKING SPACE, TIME, AND BEAUTY
June 18–September 20, 2015
(San Francisco, CA, April 30, 2015) The Contemporary Jewish Museum (The CJM) presents the
work of twenty-five international contemporary artists, scientists, and creative thinkers in the first
major exhibition organized by Chief Curator Renny Pritikin and Associate Curator Lily Siegel. Night
Begins the Day: Rethinking Space, Time, and Beauty showcases work in a variety of media including
photography, video, sculpture, installation, painting, and more by a diverse roster of established and
emerging artists including Peter Alexander, Lisa K. Blatt, Peter Dreher, Moira Dryer, Masood
Kamandy, Michael Light, Josiah McElheny, and Fred Tomaselli. The exhibition includes the first
West Coast showing of the work of French artist Laurent Grasso and includes contributions from
computer scientist Robert Kooima, the Institute For Figuring, and The Long Now Foundation.
“I had recently heard of the Hebrew word yir’ah, an amalgam of fear, awe, love, and beauty,” says
Pritikin. “It expresses the profound combination of feelings aroused by a close encounter with the
divine or creation, and it put me in mind of the Sublime and the intense reaction of awe and terror
felt throughout eighteenth century aesthetics to the suddenly staggering vastness of the planet and
the universe revealed through global exploration and advances in astronomy and science. We are, it
seems, once again grappling with these feelings in this fast-moving moment of expansion through
scientific development and technological innovation. So what does the contemporary Sublime look
like? What is our relationship to space, time, and beauty in an age dominated by information,
uncertainty, irony, and powerful but untrustworthy images? This exhibition is one response to that.”
“The Jewish concept of time, that the day begins at sundown, challenges an accepted standard much
as this provocative exhibition invites alternative ways of considering space, time, and beauty,” says
Lori Starr, Director of The CJM. “Night Begins the Day marks the beginning of a renewed era of
artistic experimentation and engagement at The CJM. Using a Jewish idea as the spark, we have
brought together some very exciting art practitioners from around the world to stimulate a broader
dialogue about contemporary concerns. With more exhibitions like this to come, The Museum is
ambitiously deepening its role as an agent of creativity and culture in the Bay Area.”
The Exhibition
New York artist Josiah McElheny worked closely with cosmologist David Weinberg on The Center Is
Everywhere (2012) to explore a small part in the vastness of space. McElheny’s sparkling brass and
cut-lead crystal chandelier is a map of a small section of the universe. Each piece of crystal stands in
for a star, a quasar, a spinning galaxy (like ours, the Milky Way), or an “elliptical” galaxy. The length
of the individual rod holding each crystal corresponds to the distance that the light from the selected
celestial element must travel to reach Earth. Scottish artist Katie Patterson’s Dying Star Letters are
literally that, letters of condolence that she began drafting in 2010 for individual stellar deaths. All
118 letters written to date will be on view, as well as any letters drafted during the run of the
exhibition. Visitors will be able to interact with computer scientist Robert Kooima’s Total Perspective
Vortex. Named after a torture device in Douglas Adams’ humorous book The Restaurant at the End of
the Universe, Kooima wrote an open-source computer program capable of rendering a database of
2,533,774 stars in real time through which a viewer can navigate, using a joystick, an accurate
depiction of seven light year’s distance from our sun.
Some of the artists in the exhibition are concerned with what it means to fill space and the
specificity of particular places. In Australia-based artist Daniel Crooks’ A Garden of Parallel Paths
(2012), a slow panning camera moves from artificial blackness onto a series of urban alleyways
cluttered with graffiti and the bustle of pedestrian activity. Each passageway is seamlessly followed
by the next in a splice that successfully compresses time and space. As the multiple passageways abut
each other in measured order, perception is blurred as people appear and disappear into a void,
forever unable to enter the next parallel path.
Time is a central concern to German artist Peter Dreher. Dreher has been working on the paintings
that comprise Tag um Tag guter Tag (Day by Day, Good Day) since 1972. The subject of each painting
is a water glass, a simple, empty water glass against a white background, painted from the same
angle, every day, once a day. The one variable the artist allows himself is time. To date, Dreher has
painted around 5,000 images of this same glass; each one is different. Each one is about the moment
of its creation, marking the passing of time only through the specificity of an instance. The seriality
of the paintings hung in concert serves to mark the passing of time, the additive effect of these
single moments.
In Germany-based artist Alijca Kwade’s Future in the Past (2012), eight pocket watches hang in a
constellation in which the uncoordinated and amplified ticking of the clocks points out the arbitrary
and man-made nature of conventional time. A prototype section of The Long Now Foundation’s
10,000 Year Clock will also be on view.
The beauty of three contemporary nocturnes, night landscapes, presented in the exhibition is both
real and illusory. In Bay Area artist Lisa K. Blatt’s video clearest lake in the world (2012), the viewer sees
a night sky with almost no light pollution videotaped in Patagonia. But Blatt’s image wobbles
because, in fact, she filmed the reflection on the surface of what is purported to be the clearest lake
in the world, leaving in doubt the reliability of the senses. Also local, Vanessa Marsh makes elaborate
photograms of the night sky. Using a complex combination of drawings, cut paper, and reverse
color paintings on Mylar, all photogrammed together, she creates a completely convincing, but
entirely fabricated depiction of the earth and firmament at night. Masood Kamandy’s Pools (2011) is
a low-altitude flyover of a large Southern California suburb, at night. The houses and streets are all
darkened but backyard swimming pools are eerily illuminated to the horizon. In fact, the image is a
projection of an artist-altered landscape.
Beauty is also forged from the horrible. Bay Area artist Michael Light’s 100 Suns (2003), begins with
found military photographs. The artist transforms the most imposing and horrible thing ever made,
a nuclear explosion, and enables the viewer to see it as a kinetic, sculptural object that redefines
splendor. In Soleil Noir (2014) by French artist Laurent Grasso, the viewer takes an almost-silent
video tour through Pompeii. Time and space seem frozen and compressed in a landscape of
bleached perfection, like half-buried bones. Pritikin has also included a photograph of the infamous
Darvaza crater (translated as the “doorway to hell”) in the former Soviet Republic of Turkmenistan.
The result of a terrible mistake made by oil explorers at the site of a natural gas field in the desert,
the enormous 230-foot wide crater is now an eternal inferno that has been burning since 1971.
Additionally, Night Begins the Day features the work of David Horvitz, Moira Dryer, Peter Alexander,
Klea McKenna, Christopher Woodcock, Fred Tomaselli, Jorge Macchi, and Edgardo Rudnitzky. It
includes a clip from Werner Herzog’s 2007 Encounters at the End of the World, Institute For Figuring’s
Bleached Reef, Louis Sahagun’s article for the LA Times about mystery rocks moving across a Death
Valley lake bed, and even the infamous Double Rainbow internet video sensation.
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog with essays from the curators and local
writers Dodie Bellamy and Nathaniel Deutsch. Available for purchase in The Museum’s Gift Store.
Exhibition Credits
Night Begins the Day: Rethinking Space, Time, and Beauty is organized by The Contemporary Jewish
Museum, San Francisco. Presenting sponsorship for this exhibition has been provided by the
Bernard Osher Jewish Philanthropies Foundation of the Jewish Community Federation and
Endowment Fund. Major sponsorship has been provided by an Anonymous donor, Gaia Fund,
RayKo Photo Center, and Wendy and Richard Yanowitch. Additional generous support is provided
by The Contemporary Jewish Museum’s Bernard and Barbro Osher Exhibition Fund. Major support
for The Contemporary Jewish Museum’s exhibitions and Jewish Peoplehood Programs comes from
the Koret Foundation.
RELATED PROGRAMMING
FOR ADULTS
Night Begins the Day, a Discussion
Thursday, Jul 9 | 6:30–8pm
Free with Museum admission of $5 after 5pm
The Contemporary Jewish Museum curators Renny Pritikin and Lily Siegel are joined by catalog
essayist Dodie Bellamy and Rabbi Peretz Wolf-Prusan to discuss The CJM’s new exhibition, Night
Begins the Day: Rethinking Space, Time, and Beauty.
Gallery Chat: Curator Lily Siegel on Moira Dryer
Friday, Jul 10 | 12:30–1pm
Free with Museum admission
Associate Curator Lily Siegel speaks about the paintings of Moira Dryer.
Gallery Chat: Renny Pritikin on Beauty
Friday, Jul 24 | 12:30–1pm
Free with Museum admission
Chief Curator Renny Pritikin discusses the inspiration behind the exhibition through a selection of
works by Vanessa Marsh, Masood Kamandy, and Lisa Blatt.
Gallery Chat: Eddie Muller on LA Noir
Friday, Aug 7 | 12:30–1pm
Free with Museum admission
Using the lens of noir, Eddie Muller aka The Czar of Noir talks about the ominous beauty of Los
Angeles as it is depicted in the exhibition.
Gallery Chat: Brandon Brown on Dying Star Letters
Friday, Aug 21 | 12:30–1pm
Free with Museum admission
Poet and performer Brandon Brown responds to Katie Patterson’s Dying Star Letters.
Laurent Grasso in Conversation
Thursday, Sep 3│6:30–8pm
$10 general (includes Museum admission)
French contemporary artist Laurent Grasso manipulates scientific and historical narratives to
displace the viewer in time and space through installations, sculptures, and videos. Grasso talks
about his body of work, including Soleil Noir, featured in Night Begins the Day.
Gallery Chat: Laurent Grasso on Soleil Noir
Friday, Sep 4 | 12:30–1pm
Free with Museum admission
Artist Laurent Grasso talks about creating Soleil Noir.
FOR FAMILIES
Drop-in Art-Making: Art of the Night Sky
Sundays, Aug 2 & 9 | 1–3pm
Free with Museum admission; youth 18 and under always free
Let your imagination soar as you create your own real or unreal visions of the sky.
About The Contemporary Jewish Museum
With the opening of its new building on June 8, 2008, The Contemporary Jewish Museum ushered
in a new chapter in its twenty-plus year history of engaging audiences and artists in exploring
contemporary perspectives on Jewish culture, history, art, and ideas. The facility, designed by
internationally renowned architect Daniel Libeskind, is a lively center where people of all ages and
backgrounds can gather to experience art, share diverse perspectives, and engage in hands-on
activities. Inspired by the Hebrew phrase “L’Chaim” (To Life), the building is a physical
embodiment of The CJM’s mission to bring together tradition and innovation in an exploration of
the Jewish experience in the twenty-first century.
Major support for The Contemporary Jewish Museum’s exhibitions and Jewish Peoplehood
Programs comes from the Koret Foundation. The Museum also thanks the Jim Joseph Foundation
for its major support of innovative strategies for educating and engaging audiences in Jewish
learning. Additional major support is provided by an Anonymous donor; Alyse and Nathan Mason
Brill; The Covenant Foundation; Gaia Fund; the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation; Grants for the
Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund; The Hearst Foundations; Walter and Elise Haas Fund; the
Hellman Family; the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and
Sonoma Counties; the Bernard Osher Jewish Philanthropies Foundation of the Jewish Community
Federation and Endowment Fund; Osterweis Capital Management; Dorothy R. Saxe; Target; and
Wendy and Richard Yanowitch.
For more information about The Contemporary Jewish Museum, visit The Museum’s website at
thecjm.org.
For media information or visuals visit our online press gallery or please contact:
The Contemporary Jewish Museum
Nina Sazevich
Public Relations
415.752.2483
nina@sazevichpr.com
Melanie Samay
Marketing and Communications Manager
415.655.7833
msamay@thecjm.org
Online thecjm.org/press
General Information
The Museum is open daily (except Wednesday) 11am–5pm and Thursday, 11am–8pm. Museum
admission is $12 for adults, $10 for students and senior citizens with a valid ID, and $5 on
Thursdays after 5pm. Youth 18 and under always get in free. For general information on The
Contemporary Jewish Museum, the public may visit The Museum’s website at thecjm.org or call
415.655.7800. The Contemporary Jewish Museum is located at 736 Mission Street (between Third &
Fourth streets), San Francisco.
###