Brush with Reality: Yigal Ozeri
Flint Institute of Arts
25 September , 2021— 2 January, 2022
Based in New York City, Yigal Ozeri is an Israeli artist best known for his meticulously crafted large-scale images of women in lush landscapes. These works have the appearance of photographs, but they are actually paintings. In varying degrees, painters have been using the camera or photograph to inform their work since the medium was invented in the mid-19th century. Typically the use of the camera was disguised or alluded to only in stylistic terms. In the late 1960s, however, artists in California and New York began to deliberately reference the photograph in their works by making the paintings look exactly like a photograph, re-creating sharp precise details, alongside fuzzy, out-of-focus elements. This movement in art was called Photorealism.
In the 21st century, Yigal Ozeri is taking Photorealism in new directions. In his choice of subject matter, he employs intricate, realistic brushwork to create a narrative that blurs the lines between what is real and fantasy. He uses the medium of digital photography and processes the image on a computer until he arrives at the desired image, which he then carefully creates on canvas using a brush and paint. Brush with Reality offers highlights from the last decade of Ozeri’s works, from his first depiction of Priscilla in the jungles of Costa Rica in 2007 to his latest series that captures people on the streets of New York City. Ozeri has shown his work around the world, with several solo exhibitions in Europe, Mexico, and China. https://www.flintarts.org/
Featured Works
About Yigal Ozeri
“Yigal Ozeri The Chameleon Trailer” © Vincent Zambrano
Yigal Ozeri (b. 1958, Israel) has developed a unique style of Photorealist painting since embracing realism in early 2000. His paintings depict women interacting and connecting with nature. Influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite works of the 1850s, his paintings possess a romantic sensibility not captured in works by the other Photorealists. Painting in strictly in oil, Ozeri produces works on canvas and large-scale works on paper; to date, he is the only Photorealist to create large oil on paper paintings. He has exhibited internationally and his paintings are held in many prestigious collections worldwide including the Museum of Modern Art, Israel, Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego California, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.