One can define the concept of transformation in many ways, but all the definitions refer to a change, or to a conversion of the given state into a new one.
Tadeusz Kantor, the Polish director and initiator of a new theater trend, said: “If I succeed at all to create something really new, I did it using well known elements of the reality that surrounds me.”
The works of Irena Biechonska come from the same place – from reality, in which the past, the present and thoughts about the future take a form. “I am driven by a search after a new form for the content – the essence of the reality in which I live” declares Biechonska and her words sound like an echo of Kantor’s statement.
Materials play a central role in her works. X-ray films, photographs, texts, fibers – all these, charged with information from their origin, all bearing their past and history, are connected in many ways with the experience of Irena. These objects serve her as raw materials and during their transformation into a subject of work she changes their form completely. X-ray films are cut into squares of different sizes, and information that was embedded in them becomes only a memory of itself. Fibers cut into powder lose their purpose, cut texts and photographs abolish their meaning and only tell us that once they were arranged in sequences or carried a record of a moment. Natural or artificial light is another integral element of Biechonska’s works. It plays a double role in the process of her artistic creation. To start with, its rays enable to take all types of photographs, and at the end, it is light that provides the hidden and opaque elements with a new value.
The four series of works: To Express the Inexpressible, Status Quo, Transformations and Albedo are based on elements taken from her personal universe. All of them deal with a change, with transforming the known and the given into the obscure and the impossible to make sense of. Each series represents a different way of search after giving a new form to a content embedded in it. In Transformations, pieces of X-ray films are tightly pinned together on metal rods and form tri-dimensional objects, monochromatic, of a spiky texture, seemingly opaque, but a in a proper lighting exposing rich colors of different hues of blue, grey and purple.
On the other hand, the series Status Quo dilutes the high density of elements and presents compositions relatively flat, in which the information, etched in general on CT films, is partially recognizable. The elements of this series are put together in a random way, but their final implementation, meticulous and ordered, leaves an impression of an archive file of a researcher of humankind. And again, light exposes formative richness within a mosaic of lines, surfaces, bubbles and sometimes letters as well.
The series Albedo cannot exist without lighting. While the previous series can be presented with reasonable lighting only, Albedo needs light focused, targeted and bright. The cylindrical shape of the semi-opaque elements, pressed together and spiky, assembled between two transparent disks, creates kind of window or porthole, through which one can see something tangible and identify it for certain. The series tries to research the concept of “Albedo” in astronomy . It investigates the bilateral relationship between the quantity of light caught by and passed through the pressed together layers and the ability of the same quantity of light to display the hidden.
The series To express the Inexpressible deals with old memories, with what has been once and cannot be brought to life again, and with the ability to preserve past experiences like … “pickled cucumbers in a jar” (I. Biechonska, 2002). From the formal point of view, the series is different both in its structure as well as in materials integrated in it. Different materials have been processed, sorted and stuffed into transparent PVC tubes, becoming a raw material for reliefs of different kinds. Some of them form colorful but monochromatic surfaces, some create kind of frame inside frame, when the inner frame
(the central element) displays recognizable elements: notes, texts, or photographs, but only in a partial way.
Irena Biechonska creates in her specific language new values for well known concepts. On one hand, she displays in front of a spectator her personal universe, and on the other - she hides it under infinite number of layers.
Her works enable to discover the huge power of the hidden, the concealed and the invisible.
Dorota Bielas

In order to celebrate the 20-th anniversary of the Bar David Museum, we had decided to have an encompassing group exhibition, which would be a dialogue between traditional Jewish art and the modern forms of contemporary plastic art relating to Jewish themes and holy ritual objects. Choosing from the large collection was not an easy task. We concentrated on works related to various perspectives, from portraits via synagogues and landscapes laden with holiness to abstract symbols. Side-by-side the works from the collection, are displayed works of contemporary painters and sculpturers. From the vast, varied body of works which confronted us, we choose according to a wide spectrum. Represented are artists whose ages range a generation, different techniques and numerous unique styles, from the Naive to the Abstract. Nowadays many artists find Jewish tradition a bottomless well of inspiration. “The return to the Jewish bookcase” finds its wide expression in plastic art, which derives directly from the Bible and from the vast Kabbalistic literature. And there are those who believe that it’s possible to equate the Secretive Studies and Art: Kabbalistic tradition and experential mysticism are aware of the multitude of meanings and the many worlds, which exist behind the texts. There is the physical, human and historical reality, but this only represents the true inner hidden reality. Certainly the creative artist feels the same: there are many worlds beyond the actual representation of his art. He is totally free in his work and expresses the feelings, intuitions, experiencesand perhaps also worlds, which lie beyond the limited world of words. A dialogue - as it were – is being held here between past and present, continuous tradition and its contemporary revelation. This is not just on the level of plastic art. Artists designers of Judaica in their innovative, exciting forms, exhibit their works beside traditional ritual objects from the Bar David Collection. Thus the dialogue between art and craft also comes into being. When the barriers between the two are blurred at times. Then dialogue ramifies into colorful, exciting, multi-sided conversation among the many creators of works. The exhibition supplies a common experience for the creating artists and the visiting public. They have a varied experience of pleasure from the sights their eyes, the thoughts provoked by challenges to their minds, and the emotional bond they feel toward the art on its own merit and to Jewish tradition which it embodies. In addition there is a bonus of bringing hearts closer together: the combination of museum, which raises aloft a banner to Jewish tradition and a kibbutz of the HaShomer Hatzair Movement has frequently raised reactions of various sorts. Now we’ve turned the entire museum into a continuing celebration of art, culture and tradition. (Hedva Dahan)

The exhibition is a sociopolitical installation, which examines values: high and low, different and equal. “The access passageways between concrete symbolic and between abstract, between earthly and heavenly and between material and spiritual. To all appearances, there are two contradictions, occupying the same place. In actuality there is a state of complementing between two opposite elements, as found in Nature itself, like fire and water – which symbolize abundant spirituality and bounteous corporeality. The exhibition encompasses two different works, in which each varies from the other absolutely. The first is a defined group of sculptures, whose setting in space turns it into a self-contained installment unit and the second is a series of abstract paintings, whose stance opposes that of the narrative, passing through both like a scarlet thread binding the different media together. Light and inner illumination are the ruling essence in Shimmer’s paintings”.

From antiquity until the present, the tree has taken a very important place in the human cultures. There are the scared trees, the Cosmic Tree, Nature’s exploitation and destruction and finally the call to preserve Nature upon the threshold of the 21st century. All of these are bound up in awesome honor toward the tree as a symbol for the tie to Nature as a part of man’s lifetime, symbolized by the Tree of Life. Exhibition shows how the relationship to the tree got its artistic expression: the valuation of the beauty of Nature, the tree as a parable for man and the connection to Jewish tradition and the Land of Israel. This is a varied group exhibition in which Jewish and Israel artists from the 19th century until the present are represented. There is a bridging between sacred Jewish tradition, belief and symbols and texts – by means of sensitive artistic expression – and between the call to return to Nature and to preserve it and trees as symbols of tranquility, health and eternity.

The group exhibition of young artists, who are wrestling with the topic of penetration while creating a dialogue among themselves and between the place in which they are creating through painting and sculpture.