Ground Level Projects: Jason Lazarus

October 28, 2009 — January 17, 2010 Jason Lazarus, The top of Anne Frank's chestnut tree, Amsterdam 2008 (video still), Courtesy of the artist. Spertus welcomes Jason Lazarus for an Artist Talk Sunday November 1, 2009 at 1 pm.

Spertus Museum’s Ground Level Projects is a dynamic new initiative consisting of a series of artist commissions for Spertus’ glass-enclosed, street-level vestibule space. The project engages four artists over a year-long period, aiming to foster creative encounters that investigate, challenge, and expand traditional perceptions of the Jewish experience. The resulting projects will be visible from the street, bridging the realms of public and private space and encouraging passers-by to enter into a meaningful and thought-provoking dialogue with the works on view as well as with Spertus. The commissions will be accessioned into Spertus Museum’s collection, enhancing its growing contemporary art holdings and reflecting its innovative exhibition program.

Jason Lazarus’ new work The top of Anne Frank's chestnut tree, Amsterdam 2008 is part of his ongoing series of conceptual self-portraits that focus on his role as an artist experiencing the world. Recorded at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, this video is a contemporary consideration of an iconic figure in Jewish history, while also representing the artist himself.

In her diary, Anne Frank often reflects upon a chestnut tree, the top of which was her only connection to the outside world. She wrote, "….from my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind….as long as this exists, I thought, and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless sky, while this lasts I cannot be unhappy…." With this poignant moving image, Lazarus invites viewers to share in the act of looking.

Lazarus has exhibited widely around the country and abroad and received an Artadia Artist grant in 2006 and the distinguished Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Emerging Artist grant in 2008.

This project is supported in part by an award from the
National Endowment for the Arts.
Related programming supported by Denis Weil in memory of Jacqueline Weil-Bloch.