By Oliver Bradley
Award-winning Israeli-born artist Amnon David Ar’s exhibition “Light Years”, which opened on 21 May at the Kirche am Hohenzollernplatz in Berlin’s swanky Wilmersdorf district, places contemporary Israeli painting inside one of Berlin’s most striking Expressionist churches.
Curated by Martin Kiefer, former curator of contemporary art at the Louvre, “Light Years” brings together works created since Ar moved to Berlin in 2013. The exhibition also marks the publication of his monograph of the same name.
The setting gives the exhibition a distinctive historical layer. The Kirche am Hohenzollernplatz was designed by the Polish-Jewish architect Ossip Klarwein, who was forced to flee Nazi Germany shortly before the church’s dedication in 1933. Klarwein later became a major architectural figure in Israel, designing the Knesset, the Theodor Herzl Memorial and the Dagon Grain Silo in Haifa.
Inside this space, Ar’s paintings enter into dialogue with a building shaped by German, Jewish and Israeli memory. The church’s stained-glass light, monumental architecture and layered biography give “Light Years” a resonance that a conventional gallery space could hardly provide.
ARTE Journal recently highlighted Ar’s visual language, presenting a world of precise and often surprising constellations: a broken egg beside a golden Chinese lucky cat, a Lenin bust beside a fresh banana, and other familiar objects arranged in ways that become strange, symbolic and open to interpretation.
That tension between technical mastery and psychological ambiguity is what makes “Light Years” a must-see. Ar’s paintings invite close looking. They do not offer easy answers. Instead, they open a space between realism, memory, humor, unease and reflection.
For Ar, this interplay of image, symbol and setting is central to the exhibition’s wider reflection on the passage of time and the human condition. As Ar tells EJPress:
“Through depictions of birth, childhood, youth, midlife, old age and death, I aim to represent how our eternal joys, fears, passions and despairs can be expressed visually within the unique setting of our time.”
“By carefully choosing the composition, objects and figures that exemplify the most typical aspects, and at the same time serve as allegories, I offer my personal commentary and interpretation.”
In this sense, “Light Years” is not only a painting exhibition. It is an encounter between art, architecture, history, place and the cycles of life.
A series of cultural events, including artist and curator talks as well as musical recitals, will accompany the exhibition throughout its run, scheduled to end on 3 September 2026.
Events include “Homages, Portraits & Musical Toys” on Saturday, 18 July 2026, at 18:00, with cellist Natalie Clein and pianist Yehuda Inbar, and “Light Years: Wandering Concert” on Saturday, 8 August 2026, at 18:00, a musical guided tour through the exhibition with Ar, members of the Tonhain Kollektiv and pianist Yehuda Inbar.
Born in Israel and based in Berlin, Amnon David Ar’s figurative paintings span portraits, still lifes, interiors, landscapes, and large-scale allegorical series. He began his professional career as an illustrator and caricaturist in Israel at age 17, trained in classical painting and anatomy, and has exhibited internationally, including at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, MEAM Barcelona, the Armory Show, Forum Gallery in New York, and museums and galleries across Europe. In 2025, Hirmer Verlag published Light Years, the first monograph covering 30 years of his work.
“Light Years” runs through 3 September 2026.