ORIENT

In the series ‘ORIENT’ shown at De Balie Benyamin Reich intricately weaves together images from the Holy Land in all its diversity. With a gentle and nonjudgmental eye, he captures the richness of its inhabitants, from secular to religious, forming a harmonious family across time and tradition. Modern-day figures resonate with biblical archetypes—a contemporary Abraham, a Hagar with Ishmael, a Pieta on the Sinai Peninsula—blurring epochs and fading politics to reveal the siblinghood of shered humanity hidden beauty in the holiest of landscapes.

Benyamin Reich (1976 in Bnei Brak) is a multimedia artist whose works deal with identity and gender paradigms. Born into a Hassidic family, Reich left the Orthodox community at 16 to dedicate his life to art. He studied at the Musrara School of Photography in Jerusalem, and École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris. The artist lives and works in Berlin.

During the weekend, that sheds light on Jacob Israël de Haan legacy we have invited Reich to exhibit his serie ORIENT. Similar to De Haan, Reich’s work expands the boundaries between cultures, religions and gender. He seeks sparks of holiness in secularized modernity and the human condition. His aesthetic mission explores conflicts and similarities between the Western world and traditional cultures, drawing inspiration from Renaissance humanism and Romanticism. In his portraits, landscapes, and still lifes, Reich combines sensuality and spirituality, the sacred and the profane, nature and civilization. His art has been exhibited in various solo and group exhibitions across Europe, including at Axel Schlesinger Zürich (2023), Podbielski.

This exhibition is part of the Jacob Israël de Haan weekend and in collaboration De Haan genootschap.