Origami Aesthetics: The Geometry of Expression

Garibi | Saadya | Toledano

20 December 2019 - 8 March, 2020
EMOZ Museum, Zaragoza, Spain

Ilan Garibi, bracelets
in wood, silver and brass

This is a sweet exhibition, and it was a pleasure, despite the few bumps in the road, to get to Spain to set it up. EMOZ is Europe's only museum dedicated to origami and one of the few such in the world. It's a privilege to work with the museum professionals there who devote their lives to displaying our art.

With over 200 objects, the show's main theme is how one edge of modern origami is seguing today into the realms of design, fine art, engineering -- and the questions this shift raises. And the experiments,
to address those questions, that we three Israeli
exhibitors are making.

Saadya Sternberg, "Red Bust"
paperfold sculpture

For instance, what happens when the folded material is NOT paper — how is this to be done technically; how does it look; what is the relation with paperfolds; can the results ever be “fashion design” or “fine art; can this
new sort of folding-work start acquiring value in the marketplace and shake off origami's reputation of being a pastime and “sweet nothing” — while not losing all its fun... And so on.

So Ilan Garibi brought his origami-based

Ynon Toledano,
"Reincarnation series"

jewelry and sculptures in folded steel, brass, silver, wood and glass (there's even paper); and Ynon Toledano brought his “surrealistic” things, and Yours Truly Saadya Sternberg brought those head sculptures with minimized lines, meant to prompt old art-history questions about surface and line and emerging form. Lots of color and light and life in this space.

I also devoted one wall to some of my geometrical-mechanical discoveries, and especially to recent work done with my students at the Shamoon College of Engineering of Beersheva. There's a video of these inventions that for now I'm displaying only in the exhibition; once the show is down I'll post it for those who could not come.

If you are in Europe, come see the things in person —“face to face.”

Cheers
Saadya