The Mike Weiss Gallery in Chelsea is currently showing Israeli painter Yigal Ozeri's Desire for Anima, a recent group of ethereal, photo-realistic oil paintings that capture the beauty of youth, femininity, and nature. According to the show's press release, Ozeri titled the exhibit "Desire for Anima" in reference to psychologist Carl Jung's concept of "the unconscious or true inner self of an individual. His models, at the transitional age between youth and maturity, are vulnerable and at the same time real in an almost dreamlike way."
Ozeri's paintings feature young, natural, red-headed females, either solo or paired up, semi-dressed, out among fields of grass, trees, or shrubbery, basking in sunlight and breezes. Ozeri does not use professional models. He places his subjects "in their natural environment" and "using a big lens from somewhere near, he captures the spontaneous." Ozeri often uses Photoshop to tweak light and colors in his photos before printing them out large-scale and recreating the images by drawing (not tracing) them on to paper.
According to Ozeri, "in a world of violence, romanticism and freedom are the answer," and that's exactly what emanates from his lush works. The 51-year-old artist, who has lived and worked in New York for the past twenty years, was at the gallery at the time that I dropped by on Saturday and seemed like a jovial man, very happy that all of his paintings had sold. It shouldn't have come as a shock to the artist - all his paintings in Desire for Anima are gorgeous! Read more at Mikeweissgallery.com. Through October 24th.
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