G*d. Reflections between Heaven and Earth at the Jewish Museum Vienna
My sculpted painting From Something to Nothing will be exhibited at the G*D exhibition at the Jewish Museum Vienna, April 2 - October 5, 2025.
It’s title was inspired by the book Jewish Mysticism in Contemporary Canadian Jewish Studies.
“… The art is a patched and plastered surface separated to reveal another. Her work breaks from the medium of painting to become sculptural. Verwer’s mid-transformationmetallic surface brings majesty to the fracturing. It demonstrates how brokenness, rupture, and unknowable outcomes are inevitable and necessary for the birth of something new”.
Rachel Kupferman, Energy Into Form: To These Questions, There is No Comprehendible Solution, Genesis Catalog, Jewish Art Salon, 2023.
About the exhibition:
G*d: for some He/She is the origin of all being, for others a grand illusion. God brings people together and also divides them. But who or what is God anyway? The exhibition G*d. Reflections between Heaven and Earth approaches the phenomenon in seven questions that often have more than just a religious answer.
Starting from Jewish perceptions of God from biblical times to our individualized, western present, the exhibition shows a wide range of positions – artistic examinations as well as outstanding religious objects. Contemporary art with its personal approaches, and historical ritual objects that are an expression of a collective religious relationship, communicate in a dialogue that, besides religious tradition, also addresses abstract topics. The field of tension between religion and science, the question of divine providence, and the free will of humans open a further dimension in the exhibition.
Visitors are invited to rediscover God through an interplay of aesthetics and sensuality: human projections and existential hopes become tangible, visible, and audible. So, is there a God? Or a Goddess? The Shoah, religious criticism, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence question and challenge the traditional image of God.
Yona Verwer, From Something to Nothing, 2023, Acrylic on Sculpted Canvas, 27 × 16 inches
The exhibition G*d. Reflections between heaven and earth will accompany the 130th anniversary of the Jewish Museum Vienna in 2025. Opened in 1895, it is the world’s first Jewish museum. Exceptional objects from the outstanding collection of the first Jewish museum, as well as loans from important national and international collections, are on public display for the first time.
Curators: Domagoj Akrap, Daniela Schmid
Dorotheergasse 11, Wien
Sun - Fri 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Closed on Saturdays