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Suspended in Time: Still Lives and Magic Realism

August 20 – December 21

Banner for the "Suspended in Time: Still Lives and Magic Realism" art exhibition, showing two paintings. The one on the left is a floral arrangement, and the one on the right is a surreal still life. The banner also lists the dates of the exhibition as August 20 - December 21 and social media handles: @uno_bak on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Suspended in Time: Still Lives and Magic Realism presents the still life works of artists Ori Gersht (b.1967), Stephen Namara (b. 1953), and Fidencio Fifield-Perez (b.1992) in conversation with a selection of Samuel Bak’s (b.1933) paintings. Historically, still life paintings have allowed artists to reflect upon our human condition through the meticulous depiction of objects, platters of food, flowers, and fruits. Capturing these elements on the cusp of decay, artists commented on the ephemerality of human existence, the vanity of youth, and the dangers of over-indulgence. In these contemporary renderings, each artist blends the personal and the domestic to ponder broader historical and contemporary narratives. This exhibition explores how these artists used their medium to create poetic and fantastical arrangements to question a “known reality” and highlight the impossibility of depicting the world in all its complexities.


Exhibition funding generously sponsored by:

A grid of logos and names of various sponsors, including Douglas County, The Sherwood Foundation, Omaha Steaks, Shirley & Leonard Goldstein Supporting Foundation, Nebraska Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts, The Milton S. and Corinne N. Livingston Foundation Fund, Valmont, Annette and Paul Smith, Mutual of Omaha, and Cynthia Epstein and David Wiesman.

Samuel Bak Museum education and operational support provided by:


Bibliography Suspended in Time: Still Lives and Magic Realism

Ahrens, Rüdiger et al. Symbolism 12/13 : [Special Focus - Jewish Magic Realism]. Ed. by Rüdiger Ahrens and Klaus Stierstorfer. Berlin ; De Gruyter, 2013.

Angulo, María-Elena. Magic Realism : Social Context and Discourse. New York: Garland Pub., 1995.

Belasco, Daniel, Arnold M. Eisen, Jewish Museum (New York, N.Y.), and Contemporary Jewish Museum (San Francisco, Calif). Reinventing Ritual : Contemporary Art and Design for Jewish Life. New York, New Haven [Conn.]: Jewish Museum ; Yale University Press, 2009.

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books, 1972

Bowers, Maggie Ann. Magic(al) Realism, New York: Routledge, 2004.

Bryson, Norman. Looking at the Overlooked. London: Reaktion Books, 1990.

Chanady, Amaryll Beatrice. Magical Realism and the Fantastic. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc, 1985.

Contemporary Jewish Museum (San Francisco, Calif), Pierre-François Galpin, and Lily Siegel. From Generation to Generation : Inherited Memory & Contemporary Art. San Francisco: Contemporary Jewish Museum, 2016.

Costello, Bonnie. Planets on Tables : Poetry, Still Life, and the Turning World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008.

Danow, David K. The Spirit of Carnival: Magical Realism and the Grotesque. Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky,1995.

De Reyna, Rudy. Magic Realist Landscape Painting. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1976.

Devlin, Liam. “Myth, Montage and Magic Realism: Rethinking the Photograph as a Discursive Document.” Photographies 12.1 (2019): 3–18.

Durix, Jean-Pierre. Mimesis, Genres, and Post-Colonial Discourse : Deconstructing Magic Realism. New York, N.Y: St. Martin’s Press, 1998.

Dziuban, Zuzanna, ed. The “Spectral Turn” Jewish Ghosts in the Polish Post-Holocaust Imaginaire. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2019.

Feinstein, Steve. Fritz Hirschberger : The Sur-Rational Holocaust Paintings. Minneapolis, Minn.: Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota, 2002.

Gibbons, Joan. Contemporary Art and Memory: Images of Recollection and Remembrance London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019.

Gilmore, Leah. The Limits of Autobiography: Trauma and Testimony, New York: Cornell University Press, 2001.

Hochstrasser, Julie Berger, Still Life and Trade in the Dutch Golden Age. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007.

Huber, Stephanie Lebas. Dutch Neorealism, Cinema, and the Politics of Painting, 1927-1945. 1st ed. Oxford: Taylor & Francis Group, 2024.

Lopez-Calvo, Ignacio, ed. Magical Realism. Ipswich, Massachusetts: Salem Press, 2014.

Menton, Seymour. Magic Realism Rediscovered. East Brunswick, N.J., London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1983.

Nora, Pierre. Les Lieux de Mémoire, Paris : Editions Gallimard, 1986.

Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” Representations, No. 26, Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory (Spring, 1989), 7-24.

Röhrl, Boris. World History of Realism in Visual Arts, 1830–1990: Naturalism, Socialist Realism, Social Realism, Magic Realism, New Realism, and Documentary Photography. Hildesheim, Germany: Georg Olms Verlag, 2013.

Rylands, Philip. “Magic Realism.” Burlington magazine 160.1381 (2018): 338.

Shevi, Orly. “Memory and Power : Reflections on History, Memory, and Auschwitz in Contemporary Art and Film.” Dissertation, University of California, San Diego, 2010.

Soltes, Ori Z., and B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum. 1997. Magic Realism and the Legacy of the Holocaust. Washington, D.C.: B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum.

Van der Marck, Jan. Neo-Realism in Painting. Amsterdam: J.M. Meulenhoff, 1961.

Young, James Edward. At Memory’s Edge : After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.

Young, James Edward. The Stages of Memory : Reflections on Memorial Art, Loss, and the Spaces Between. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016.

Zamora, Lois Parkinson, and Wendy B Faris. Magical Realism : Theory, History, Community. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press, 1995.

Zemel, Carol. Looking Jewish : Visual Culture and Modern Diaspora. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015

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