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Yigal Ozeri

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Yigal Ozeri
Yigal Ozeri in 2019
Born1958 (age 65–66)
Israel
Known forPainting
MovementContemporary art, Photorealism
ChildrenAdam Ozeri
Websitewww.yigalozeriartist.com

Yigal Ozeri (born 1958) is an Israeli artist based in New York City. He is known for large-scale cinematic portraits of young women in landscapes. As one of the leading Photorealism painters, his large-scale oil paintings tend to capture ethereal scenes of women in nature.[1][2][3][4][5][6] His son is Adam Ozeri, a professional soccer player.

Biography

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Yigal Ozeri was born in Israel in 1958. He currently lives and works in New York City.

In 1997, Ozeri collaborated with Israeli poet Ronny Someck to produce The Razor that Cut the Metaphoric Face of Poetry which included five etchings by Ozeri, and five ensuring poems by Someck. Ozeri's etchings, in order, were titled Pointed Tower, Tears of Buildings, Unbuilt Pagoda, Dirty Laundry, and Tears of Buildings II. The book itself was produced by The Cabri Print Workshop, based out of Kibbutz Cabri in the Western Galilee.[7]

In 2014, he co-founded Mana Contemporary where he has a studio in the flagship of Jersey City.[8]

Influences

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Originally an abstract painter, Ozer has developed a unique style of Photorealist painting since embracing realism in early 2000. Influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite works of the 1850s, his paintings possess a romantic sensibility not captured in works by the other Photorealists. He specifically cites Pre-Raphaelite painters Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais as inspirations, in both process and product.

A catalyst for his shift towards Photorealism has been largely accredited as well to Spanish Baroque painters. His encounter with Diego Velázquez's Las Meninas (1656) spurred his shift towards an exact representation, as Ozeri modernizes such traditional keystones of the art canon through technological mediums, shifting the visual aperture to that of the digitized depth of field. Velázquez's visual demarcations in his paintings suggest, in fact, the employment of the camera obscura, which assisted in achieving an exaggerated perspective and depth of field.

As a member of a generation of younger painters concerned with representation, he draws upon contemporaries such as Chuck Close, Gerhard Richter, and Andrew Wyeth.

Style and technique

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According to the Knoxville Museum of Art's curator Steven Wicks, Ozeri's compositions "probe the boundaries between painting and photography within the context of the Digital Age."[9] Ozeri photographs his subjects, often strikingly beautiful women in nature. These figures evoke the aestheticism of late Romanticism subgenre––nineteenth-century melancholia associated with the ends of the pastoral and the rise of the urban.[10] As these women wander throughout beautiful landscapes, their gaze turns inwards and pensive, adding a psychological layering of intimate experiences with the natural world––away from the screen-based––while hinting at the presence of boundless psychological landscapes.

While photographing his subjects, Ozeri supplies himself with multiple already-made images from which to choose.[10] Photographic attributes include sharp focus of the subject, a shallow depth of field, and centered composition. These photographs are then projected onto a canvas with traced outlines. The projection is then removed, and the artist translates the forms into tiny painted color shapes that are gradually tightened and blended for varying degrees of focus. In his process of visual translation, Ozeri "preserves the handmade as a record of its own means of representation, rather than that of what it depicts."[10] The painting thus serves as an act of abstraction, transcription, and transformation. This results in a painting that is formal and conceptually open to interpretation rather than merely a skillful rendering of appearances.

Exhibitions

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Yigal Ozeri has exhibited globally for decades, including solo exhibits in Bologna, Barcelona, Los Angeles, Toronto, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, France, Denmark, Peru, India, and Munich.[11]

He participated in a traveling show titled 50 Years of Hyperrealistic Painting, showcased in a number of venues including Museum Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, and Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao.

Selected solo exhibitions

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2010

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2011

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2012

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2013

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2014

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2017

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  • The Storm, Zemack Gallery for Contemporary Art. Tel Aviv.[14]

2018

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2019

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  • Reality Check, Zemack Contemporary Art, Tel-Aviv, Israel
  • A New York Story, Rutger Brandt Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands

2020

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2024

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Collections

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Yigal Ozeri's art are in permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, the Jewish Museum of New York, The Israel Museum, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Albertina and other public institutions.[16] A few select paintings were recently acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum.[17]

References

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  1. ^ "Juxtapoz Magazine - Update: The Photoreal Works of Yigal Ozeri". juxtapoz.com. Retrieved 2015-02-13.
  2. ^ "Yigal Ozeri | Zemack | Contemporary Art". zcagallery.com. Retrieved 2015-02-13.
  3. ^ "Israeli Artist Yigal Ozeri Paints Instagram Under The Table". huffingtonpost.com. 24 February 2014. Retrieved 2015-02-13.
  4. ^ "Photorealistic Paintings of Women by Yigal Ozeri | iGNANT.de". ignant.de. 17 July 2014. Retrieved 2015-02-13.
  5. ^ "Yigal Ozeri: dipinti ad olio che sembrano fotografie!". chedonna.it. 28 January 2015. Retrieved 2015-02-13.
  6. ^ "Art Review: Mana Contemporary in Jersey City | NJ.com". nj.com. 25 January 2015. Retrieved 2015-02-13.
  7. ^ "The Razor That Cut The Metaphoric Face Of Poetry". Retrieved 2018-10-23.
  8. ^ "Artist Yigal Ozeri aims to mirror Mana Contemporary Jersey City in our hometown, Chicago!". Suzanne Lovell Inc. 2014-07-25. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  9. ^ Kaplan, Sarah (2024-03-29). "KMA Acquires Two Yigal Ozeri Artworks Unveiled at Lilienthal Gallery Event". Knoxville Museum of Art. Retrieved 2024-04-21.
  10. ^ a b c Ostrow, Saul (2023). "Yigal Ozeri: Painting Through a Lens". Yigal Ozeri: My Territory. Bruno Art Group. pp. 62–65.
  11. ^ a b "Photorealism: Yigal Ozeri". Lilienthal Gallery. Retrieved 2024-04-21.
  12. ^ "Galería Alvaro Alcazar". galeriaalvaroalcazar.com. Retrieved 2015-02-14.
  13. ^ "Mana Contemporary Chicago". manacontemporarychicago.com. Retrieved 2015-02-14.
  14. ^ "The Storm by Yigal Ozeri". Zemack Gallery for Contemporary Art. Retrieved 2019-01-17.
  15. ^ "Yigal Ozeri: A New York Story" (PDF). Louis K. Meisel Gallery. Retrieved 2019-01-17.
  16. ^ "Yigal Ozeri". Wall Street International. 22 April 2017. Retrieved 2019-01-17.
  17. ^ "Yigal Ozeri | Smithsonian American Art Museum". americanart.si.edu. Retrieved 2024-04-21.
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