Dmitri Cherniak @ Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

Not one to pass up an opportunity to visit the world’s greatest little nationi (which also happens to be my ancestral homeland),ii I recently joined digital artist friend Dmitri Cherniak in Israel to celebrate the launch of his new exhibition: Ringers in Motion at Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

And would you know it, it was a home run? Projected and displayed against a huge white wall on the lower floor of the museum at the bottom of the huuuge escalators (seriously the whole place is enormous),iii these typically fixed depictions of strings looping around pegs were brought to life… avec son et lumière. While perhaps initially lacking “punch” as an exhibition – at least by the standards of the “at-a-glance” test – it massively rewarded patient attention and observation. After a mere minute of attention (which is admittedly a lot of focus by the brain-rot standards of today), the viewer is treated to an unfolding; a rhythmic exploration of this foundational Art Blocks project the way it was meant to be seen: as a grid.iv And one being created in real time, just like the host city / nation underneath.v Could a more dynamic yet timeless project have found a more dynamic yet timeless place to be showcased? It’s hard to imagine how.

Discussing the project with museum curator Tal Lanir and collector Benny “Redbeard” Gross at the sold-out cocktail event last week, Dmitri gave a surprisingly in-depth overview of his oeuvre to-date, where his now-iconic Ringers fits within that, and why he was such a Swiftie when he was younger and had more hair (even though such causal arrows are of course inherently fuzzy). The rest of the evening panel was… a panel, which is to say never quite as deep as you’d like, but thankfully bookended by truly fantastic conversations with other guests, attendees, and artists, including a very special dinner in Neve Tzedek afterwards. In addition to praying at the Western Wall and visiting some of my large-and-growing extended family in Nahsholim, Dmitri’s event and exhibition was easily the highlight of this all-too-brief trip.

Anyways, here’s my own little crummy video below, but if you want to get a real sense for the scale and impact of the project, Dmitri’s own video drives it home with sincere authority. Scarce few videos of museum artwork do any semblance of justice to being there in-person, but his is the exception that proves the rule. Go check it out.

Ringers in Motion is on now at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art until November 14th, 2026.

  1. Putting aside what makes a nation “great” in this day and age, what even is a “nation” anymore? On the cusp of Alberta’s non-legally-binding “separatist” referendum this coming week, it’s worth considering some of the unspoken but embedded premises contained therein, including:
    1. Canada is a sovereign country
    2. Alberta also has the makings of a sovereign country just not the legal recognition
    3. All that’s required for sovereignty is vox populi and a sprinkling of legal recognition, not institutional frameworks, military-industrial base, technological independence, an organised elite, a socially binding narrative that can last for at least the next 50 years, and a citizenry willing to lay down their lives for the cause
    4. Alberta (and Albertans) would be wealthier if it weren’t for Confederation
    5. Albertans have all the technical, intellectual, and social resources required to maximise our natural wealth but are being held back by outsiders (eg. Ottawa)

    As you might gather, I don’t happen to agree with any of these premises, and so no I won’t be “casting my ballot” tomorrow.

    And furthermore, my 2017 analysis of what Israel is as a nation has held up remarkably well, if you can parse the almost comical density of references, allegories, and metaphors. If you will, feel free to compare my own analysis from a decade ago with last week’s “controversial” analysis by Tamir Hayman from Tel Aviv University’s national security policy arm. You’ll notice more than a little overlap. ↩

  2. Or is it all of our ancestral homelands? Per David Reich’s latest paper this week, quite likely! So much for the monolithic “out of africa” story… see “Hypothesis: A modern human range expansion ~300,000 years ago had a critical role in Neandertal origins“.

    Certainly the feel on the ground in Tel Aviv is one of a magical energy and essentially unsurpassed authenticity, “colonialism” and projected red-green antipathies very much notwithstanding:

     

    ↩

  3. And popular! Tel Aviv Museum of Art sees about 1mn visitors annually (while only being open 244 days last year), which puts in on par with Tate Britain in London, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and Getty Center in LA, not to mention ahead of the Neue Nationalgaleria in Berlin, Guggenheim and Whitney in New York, AGO in Toronto, and even LACMA. Not bad for a little country in a war zone! But hey I guess Paris and Milan are war zones too now, so let’s see how Louvre and Pinacoteca di Brera 2026 attendance figures look… ↩
  4. This is why I own a couple of the LACMA prints but not Ringers as such… because by the time I discovered the “originals” I was priced out of owning a proper set of 9, 16, or 25 of them. I only “missed” by a few months, but 2021 was a crazy time. ↩
  5. You think your city has a lot of cranes and construction? You’ve got nothing on Israel right now. New trains, towers, sewers, roads, sidewalks, bike lanes, you name it, they’re building it. No matter that the odd Iranian drone crumbles a building now and again, it just gets rebuilt better than ever. ↩

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