2008 Woodie Awards
Pray-painting:
Two New Exhibits at the YU Museum
Menachem Wecker
Issue date: 3/8/05 Section: Arts & Culture
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Having Trouble to Pray: Drawings and Paintings by Moico Yaker
February 6 - May 1, 2005
Manhattan Mincha Map: Photographs by Jaime Permuth
January 30 - June 19, 2005
The Yeshiva University Museum
15 West 16th Street
http://www.yumuseum.org/
One morning in New York City I decided that the only way I was going to connect to my artistic muse at Yeshiva College was to exile myself from the Heights and trek way downtown to the YU Museum, looking for a religious exhibit that would "force" me into it. I needed to feel the Torah belts tighten my skin, hoping to lure my heart into the land of bananas wrapped in tefilin, bizarre storms of insects carrying rabbis and bodies with heads of leaves that betrayed a Magritte fetish...
Or so goes artist Moico Yaker's narrative in his statement of "Having Trouble to Pray" at the YU Museum. His statement reads like a memoir with a taste for the surreal and the magical. "One morning in Tel Aviv I decided that the only way I could get to pray was by going out to the streets looking for a religious person who would force me into it. I needed to feel the leather stripes of the tefillin tighten my skin to precipitate again out of my heart the fluid of emotions that once warmed my days," he begins. "A morning ritual of ink stripes on paper skin. That day I draw my prayer while my fingers, entangled in stripes, run like blood as black as a raging bull... But I must concentrate, and I try to find a better position to read my prayers. I stand on one arm. I put the book on the floor and read it, bending. But then an olive tree starts to grow from my fingers, and I squeeze it on my arm to leave clear signs of my devotion. By the next day the bush has grown profusely, it has flowered. . . "
What comes next? Well buzzing insects "chanting in unison" (to which the only reply is "We must all be Jewish"), colorful birds, jungle parrots "arraying themselves on the tree that was slowly growing out of my neck," juicy fruits ("This fruit must be also Jewish") and lemons that turn into apples, bananas and tangerines, of course. Then the artist sings a Jewish opera with all the fruits, and soon he is sweating black ink on his "white paper skin."
February 6 - May 1, 2005
Manhattan Mincha Map: Photographs by Jaime Permuth
January 30 - June 19, 2005
The Yeshiva University Museum
15 West 16th Street
http://www.yumuseum.org/
One morning in New York City I decided that the only way I was going to connect to my artistic muse at Yeshiva College was to exile myself from the Heights and trek way downtown to the YU Museum, looking for a religious exhibit that would "force" me into it. I needed to feel the Torah belts tighten my skin, hoping to lure my heart into the land of bananas wrapped in tefilin, bizarre storms of insects carrying rabbis and bodies with heads of leaves that betrayed a Magritte fetish...
Or so goes artist Moico Yaker's narrative in his statement of "Having Trouble to Pray" at the YU Museum. His statement reads like a memoir with a taste for the surreal and the magical. "One morning in Tel Aviv I decided that the only way I could get to pray was by going out to the streets looking for a religious person who would force me into it. I needed to feel the leather stripes of the tefillin tighten my skin to precipitate again out of my heart the fluid of emotions that once warmed my days," he begins. "A morning ritual of ink stripes on paper skin. That day I draw my prayer while my fingers, entangled in stripes, run like blood as black as a raging bull... But I must concentrate, and I try to find a better position to read my prayers. I stand on one arm. I put the book on the floor and read it, bending. But then an olive tree starts to grow from my fingers, and I squeeze it on my arm to leave clear signs of my devotion. By the next day the bush has grown profusely, it has flowered. . . "
What comes next? Well buzzing insects "chanting in unison" (to which the only reply is "We must all be Jewish"), colorful birds, jungle parrots "arraying themselves on the tree that was slowly growing out of my neck," juicy fruits ("This fruit must be also Jewish") and lemons that turn into apples, bananas and tangerines, of course. Then the artist sings a Jewish opera with all the fruits, and soon he is sweating black ink on his "white paper skin."
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