Joshua Simon

Since the so-called dematerialization of currencies and art practices in the late 1960s and early 1970, we have witnessed several shifts the book claims: the focus of labor has moved from production to consumption, the commodity has become the historical subject, and symbols now behave like materials (brands etc.).

Neomaterialism explores the meaning of the world of commodities, and reintroduces various notions of dialectical materialism into the conversation on the subjectivity and vitalism of things.

At the height of the influence of Object Oriented Ontology and speculative realism in contemporary art circles, the book provided a much needed critique of these trends of re-fetishization and de-contextualization.

Joshua Simon (born 1979, Tel Aviv), is a curator, writer, publisher, cultural critic, poet, filmmaker and public intellectual.

He currently lives in Philadelphia, PA.

In 2024, Simon curated a seminal art project in Vienna Secession titled SLIME.

Prior to that, Simon curated exhibitions in museums and art spaces in Tel Aviv-Yafo, NYC, Melbourne, London, Zürich, Vienna, Berlin, and Amsterdam, among other places.

Since the late 1990s, Simon has been working closely with poet and writer Roy Chicky Arad on a number of initiatives in Tel Aviv.

Together they founded The University of Shenkin and The Free Academy (for which Simon opened the Art Pavilion in his apartment), two platforms of nomadic study that were hosted by art schools and art festivals, theatres and schools.

Out of these initiatives came out a travelling poetry reading program that Simon and Arad initiated, which in turn morphed into Guerilla Culture – a platform of poets and activists who organized poetry demonstrations and publications throughout the 2000s.

Parallel to these projects in poetry, since the 2000 Simon has been writing and directing short films as a member of the group of filmmakers Baboon, together with Tom Shoval, Daniel Adar, Michael Hanegbi, Adam Sanderson and Oren Shay.

The debut exhibition, I Slept With Ari Libsker (2001), gained mythical stature as several artists in it went on to become prominent cultural figures in the city and worldwide, namely Roee Rosen, Zoya Cherkassky and Roy Chicky Arad.

Simon is signed as curator on some seminal exhibitions in the Israeli art scene and internationally.

In 2004 he curated Sharon, an exhibition which is considered the first to introduced a class reading to the imagery of the Occupation.

In 2007, at the age of 28, Simon curated The Rear - The First Herzliya Biennial for Contemporary Art, which was a multi-venue art event at the Herzliya Museum of Art and in non-art spaces around the coastal city, with new works commissioned from 75 artists.

That same year Simon co-curated with Maayan Strauss and Roy Chicky Arad the exhibition Doron, around a key Israeli collector Doron Sabag, and the relation of him being a key donor to museums to his business in human resources and the deteriorating workers rights in the local labor market.

In the summer of 2007 Simon and Arad opened together with artist Maayan Strauss The New and Bad Art Gallery in Tel Aviv, which presented a line-up of debut solo exhibitions by young female artists (Eden Bannet, Inbal Strauss, Noa Tsaushu, Oren Ben Moreh, Efrat Kedem and Fumio Sakurai), with two male exceptions (Nimrod Kamer and Know Hope).

Initially planned to operate for six months, the gallery re-opened after a few months in Haifa under the directorship of Natalie Levin, and operated there for two years.

Simon's work is often identified with several concepts -

Putting debt at the center of the contemporary experience, the book explores our material culture following the 2008 crisis and the attempts to secure the art market.

Simon put forward several concept in the book, such as the unreadymade, sentimental value, and the promise of the dividual as a means for a vocabulary in this new economy of meaning.

Reflecting on the general intellect as labor and the subjugation of an overqualified generation to the neo-feudal order of debt finance — with a particular focus on dispossession and rent economy, post-appropriation display strategies and negation, the barricade and capital's technocratic fascisms—Neomaterialism merges traditions of epic communism with the communism that is already here.

Neomaterialism has been taught in several art programs around the world, and generated several reading groups in Europe, the UK and the US.

Among the reactions to it Boris Groys wrote: "After a short period of ‘unbearable lightness of being,’ the social gravitation begins to be felt again. In his book Joshua Simon describes and analyzes the growing weight of the technical, economic, material basis of our society. The author's sensibility for today's Zeitgeist is at the same time entertaining and precise."

Jan Verwoert, wrote for Frieze Magazine: "In his new book Neomaterialism, Joshua Simon perceptively argues that debt is the crux of the matter. Credit card purchases and mortgage settlements may feel abstract at first. But debt brings its material truth home to you: you do not own that new computer, TV, car or flat; they own you."

Pelin Tan wrote in Domus Magazine: "Neomaterialism is a book that prevents us to fall into the pessimism of perceiving the thought of new materialism as a minimalist approach as well as to reconsider our practice as curators, architects and artists in a transversal way in order to create a further criticism not only of the modernist but also post-structuralist heritages of representation and subject-object relations."

And Louis Moreno wrote in Onlineopen.org: "Perhaps Simon’s book represents a new form of guide to contemporary art. This is art as diagnostic toolkit, able to decipher the complex threats that lurk within the fixtures and fittings of everyday life […] Simon’s implicit suggestion that neomaterialist art embodies an auto-critique of financialised capitalism is fascinating."

The book had numerous print runs.

Simon headed the theory studies at the Postgraduate program, Hamidrasha School of Art, Beit Berl College, which he helped to set up (2009-2014).

During his tenure at MoBY - Museums of Bat Yam, Simon initiated an international programming with group and solo-shows which traveled around the world.

As director of MoBY, Simon put special emphasis on expanding outreach programs, developing funding options and facilities and cataloging the museum's collection.

Simon has worked with artists, writers and curators such as Hito Steyerl, Anri Sala, Anna Witt, Thomas Galler, Cristina Garrido, Nicole Wermers, Micah Hesse, Ohad Meromi, Olaf Nicolai, Francesco Finizio, Mika Rotenberg, Keren Cytter, Ari Libsker, Nimrod Kamer, Maayan Strauss, Vincent Vulsma, Harald Thys and Jos de Gruyter, Ekaterina Degot, Boyan, Elisheva Levy, Ariella Azoulay, Jan Verwoert, Ingo Niermann, Kerem Halbrecht, Lara Favaretto, Irit Rogoff, Caterina Riva, Omer Fast, Joseph Grima, Noam Yuran, Jodi Dean, Noa Yafe, Bini Adamczak, Slavoj Zizek, Aim Deuelle Luski, Michael E. Smith, Ruti Sela and Maayan Amir, Oliver Ressler, David Riff, Noa Tsaushu, Zoya Cherkassky, Simon Fujiwara, Doron Rabina, Avi Bohbot, Zachary Formwalt, Moshe Gershuni, Harun Farocki, Yael Bartana, Yair Garbuz, Boris Buden, and Roee Rosen, among others.

His writing has been published in a wide range of publications: Springerin, Frieze, Afterall, Domus International, Modern Painters, Temporary Art Review, Artpress, Mousse Magazine, Art Actuel, e-flux journal, Public Seminar and Israeli Art magazine Studio.

Simon is a fellow at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School, New York (2011-2013), and the Akademie de Künst der Welt, Cologne (2017).

Simon is former director and chief curator at MoBY-Museums of Bat Yam, Israel (2012- 2017), which made him the youngest museum director in the history of the country.

Co-founding editor of the Tel Aviv-Yafo based Maayan publishing together with Roy Chicky Arad.

His writing has been taught among other places at the Royal College of Art London, UK, Northwestern University Chicago, US, and the Oslo National Academy of the Arts Norway.

Simon began curating in his rooftop apartment which he named The Free Academy Pavilion of Art, on Jaffa Rd. 3, Tel Aviv.

It has been argued that the fact that Sabag is on the board of directors of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, blocked Simon from being seriously considered for the position of chief curator at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art a decade later. In 2012 Simon curated together with Roy Chicky Arad and Ari Libsker the exhibition Iran in opposition to Israeli government plans to go to war with Iran.

The book Neomaterialism (2013), examines the meaning of materialism today, as materiality has been supposedly defeated by financial and digital operations.