Viewing the large photorealist paintings of the New York-based Israeli artist Yigal Ozeri, one might ask “What is real?” We understand that a photograph represents, essentially, the reality that entered the lens of the camera. Ozeri manipulates his photographs on the computer before transferring the image to paper or canvas during which he says he “erases the photography.” As the viewer contemplates his paintings, the brain shifts among the real, the photograph and the painting. “You don’t know what it is,” he says. “And that’s a good thing.”
Untitled: New York Subway, oil on paper, 20 x 30". Collection of Eileen S. Kaminsky.
In reality, a person is separate from her setting. They are different materials for one thing. In a photograph, they are both emulsion on paper or pixels in a digital file but we still see them as separate. In Ozeri’s paintings, they are the same material: paint. His women and girls appear as one with the landscape, ageless in a time of innocence.
Untitled; Territory, oil on canvas, 80 x 120". Collection of Eileen S. Kaminsky.
Unique among photorealists, he creates large oil paintings on paper as well as canvas. In a 60-by-90-inch oil on paper from his series Territory, the model emerges from the water like Venus with her eyes gazing toward a light. She is like a warrior with her subordinates following behind her, slightly out of focus to give the attention to her.
Untitled: Territory, oil on paper, 60 x 90". Collection of Louis K. and Susan P. Meisel.
Living in New York, Ozeri has also focused his attention on people in the city going about their daily lives. In Untitled: New York Subway, a man navigates the crowds at the Grand Central station. Again, Ozeri paints him in sharp focus, intent upon his journey, while the other passengers are out of focus in the background.
An exhibition, Brush with Reality, featuring work by the artist from the last 10 years, continues at the Flint Institute of Arts in Flint, Michigan, through January 2. —
Flint Institute of Arts
1120 E. Kearsley Street • Flint, MI 48503
(810) 234-1695 • www.flintarts.org
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