Exhibition held at At Schinkel church St. Elisabeth in Berlin-Mitte, Invalidenstr. 3, 10115 Berlin

Open Church St. Elisabeth + The Cast Whale Project by Gil Shachar

The life-size 14 m long whale by the German-based Israeli artist Gil Shachar will ‚strand‘ in the St. Elisabeth church in Berlin Mitte from April 22nd to May 14th. Daily from 11 am to 8 pm. The exhibition was curated and organized by Semjon Contemporary and supported by friends of the gallery.

Gil Shachar, gallery artist of Semjon Contemporary Berlin, obtained a permit to cast a stranded humpback whale in South Africa after extended negotiations with the South African Ministry of Environmental Affairs. For this purpose, he set up a standby team on site, which would immediately start securing and molding the dead whale, once stranded, after the artist‘s “go“.

Finally, after two years of waiting, in August 2018 a whale suitable for casting washed up, lying on it’s back, in Lambert’s Bay on the west coast, north of Cape Town. The artist flew over from Germany the next day to join the team in making a mold of the whale, an operation which took three days. Shortly afterwards the whale was drawn back into the ocean by the tide. The whale sculpture was accomplished later on during three months of concentrated work in Cape Town and was thereafter shipped to Germany.

Last year, despite Corona, many people were able to see the whale-sculpture at the Bochum Art Museum. Visitors to the presentation of the whale-sculpture are fascinated and touched by Gil’s project. The encounter with this huge work leaves its mark.
The Schinkel Church of St. Elisabeth on Invalidenstrasse is the ideal venue for such a presentation. It’s architectural proportions match the whale perfectly– the church‘s tragic history and hopeful new beginning after the war and after reunification, through countless cultural events, admirably reflect the ‘resurrection‘ of the whale, its new life as art.
That this sacred location is an open house during this Covid 19 pandemic turns out to be great luck.

The sculpture has become an ambassador for the tortured creature and a reminder of how we continue to treat our planet. It conotates also our deepley embedded collective memory of myths that surround whales and their origin in multiple cultures, such as the story of Jona and Moby Dick.

This masterpiece by Gil Shachar is a fascinating, evidently realistic, yet abstract sculpture that continues to influence people.

Semjon H. N. Semjon, March 2021

The Cast Whale Project

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