Artists Jacob Genen, Diana Kurz and Joel Silverstein explore the process of re-creation: the deposits and richness of creativity that emerge from desolation and despair.
Curated by Dorit Jordan Dotan and Judith Joseph. In addition to the curators, this program is produced with the support of Jewish Art Salon’s Program Advisor Yona Verwer and team members Cheselyn Amato and Chana Wiesenthal-Elias.
About the Artists
Jacob Genen is a lifelong resident of New York based in Astoria, Queens. He makes anthropomorphic art using Victorian era images from the 1800’s coupled with animals. He incorporates design elements from different cultures around the world and uses them to tell a story of exotic creatures in foreign lands. He mixes illustration with digital collage and uses classic printmaker techniques to tell his story of worlds coming together. IG @jkejake
Diana Kurz was born in Vienna Austria. She has exhibited her art in solo and group shows in the US and Europe and has work in many distinguished collections including Corcoran Gallery; Rose Art Museum; Wien Museum, Vienna; Jewish Museum of Vienna; Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and Smith College Museum. She has received numerous awards including a Fulbright Fellowship to France; American Center Residency in Paris; New York State Council on the Arts CAPS Grant; Austrian Ministry Artist Residency in Vienna; ACA, MacDowell, and Yaddo residencies. She studied at Brandeis (BA) and Columbia (MFA) and has taught at several well known institutions. dianakurz.com
Joel Silverstein is an artist and curator who paints expressionist landscapes, portraits, and interiors often with Jewish themes using direct observation, history painting, comics, movie stills and collage. He has exhibited nationally and internationally. Mr. Silverstein is a Founding and Executive Member of the Jewish Art Salon and has curated or advised on 15 Salon exhibitions including Through Compassionate Eyes: Artist’s Call for Animal Rights at the Charter Oak Center in Hartford Ct. Recent exhibitions of his own work include the Greenkill Gallery, Art Basel, Miami, and the Amstelkirk Gallery in Holland. His work and curated exhibitions are cited in Ori Z. Soltes’ Tradition and Transformation; Three Millennium of Jewish Art & Architecture and Matthew Baigell’s Jewish Identity in American Art, a Golden Age Since the 1970s. joelsilversteinart.com About the Series In the early spring of 2020, as the impact of the COVID19 pandemic began to be recognized, the Jewish Art Salon was uniquely positioned as the world’s largest Jewish visual arts organization, with a global network of contemporary artists, curators, art historians and art writers, to pivot its programming to premiere live-streamed, online Studio Salon Sessions . Now into it’s second year, OPEN STUDIOS continues to present artists from the United States, Israel and Europe in real time, showing and discussing their work.
