Tunni Kraus: The Primordium

Tunni Kraus is travelling from Melbourne, Australia to debut a new body of paintings. The paintings take stylistic inspiration from El Lissitzky and offer conceptual interpretation of The Primordium by Der Nister, published in Warsaw in 1910, recently translated into English for the first time by Nathan Wolski.

Kraus applies painted geometric abstraction in El Lissitzky’s distinctive style, to emancipate the Zoharic concepts buried within The Primordium’s density. In each painting, Kraus examines the anxieties associated with the creative act. Attempting to map our self-consciousness and creative drive for self-expression, the series of paintings evolve as an examination of our relationship with cosmic silence and nothingness.

Public Opening Event 
Co-presented by Koffler Arts
August 29, 2024: 6-8pm: Caviar20 Gallery

ABOUT TUNNI KRAUS
Tunni Kraus is a Melbourne based multidisciplinary artist. His work challenges the way we communicate and make meaning through experimenting with calligraphy, traditional scribing practices, painting and new media. Since completing his Masters in Public Art at RMIT in 2010, Kraus has continued study in the form of apprenticeships and training with master scribes of varied traditions in Australia, Asia and The Middle East, most recently focusing on the sacred, scribal practices associated with the Hebrew letter. He has exhibited extensively in Australia and abroad, including MONA FOMA (Tasmania), McClelland Sculpture Gallery (Victoria), Oi! (Hong Kong) and Musrara Mix ( Jerusalem). www.tunni.com.au

ABOUT CAVIAR20
Art resale experts, Caviar20 focuses on the 20th century with an emphasis on works on paper. Troy Seidman, the founder, has a particular interest in sculpture, works on paper, photography and abstraction of the 60’s and 70’s. Our collection includes turn of the millenium blue-chip artists with an emphasis on works created between 1965-2005. Caviar20 has placed works in the permanent collections of the following institutions: Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, New York), Burnaby Art Gallery (Burnaby, British Columbia), Columbus Museum (Columbus, Georgia), Kunstmuseum Heidenheim (Germany) University Galleries, University of San Diego (California). https://www.caviar20.com

ABOUT DER NISTER’S PRIMORDIUM
A kabbalistically-suffused, hyper-anthropomorphic myth about creation by a master of Yiddish modernism, Der Nister’s Primordium (Der Kadmen, 1910) takes the reader deep into the mind of God preceding creation, and narrates his precarious and tortured quest for self-consciousness and expression. Tracing the Primordium’s maturation across cosmic eons in the face of his own doubts and fear, and in the face of cosmic silence and nothingness, Der Nister’s Der Kadmen is a meditation on the dialectics of being and nothingness, and one of the boldest experiments in writing Jewish myth in modernity.