Angell Gallery

Current exhibition

West Gallery

Yigal Ozeri
Territory

June 13th – August 10th
Opening reception Thursday June 13th 6–8 PM

Untitled by Yigal Ozeri

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ANGELL GALLERY is pleased to present TERRITORY, a solo exhibition of recent photorealist paintings, photographs and a video by New York-based Israeli artist YIGAL OZERI. This is Ozeri's first exhibition in Toronto. TERRITORY will on view throughout the gallery from June 13, 2013 to August 10, 2013.

An opening reception will be held on Thursday June 13, 2013, 6 to 8 PM.

Yigal Ozeri is one of the most significant photorealist painters today. Photorealism, a painting movement that came to the fore in the late 1960s, was one of the first modern movements to embrace the photograph as a direct source of inspiration. Photorealism has experienced a significant revival in the past decade, with touring exhibitions presenting the originators of the style alongside new international practitioners.

Ozeri's show at Angell Gallery features new large oil paintings on paper on the theme of young female Israeli soldiers, a subject he investigated in his acclaimed solo show at the Mike Weiss Gallery in New York City in 2012. The young woman envisioned as contemporary goddess is a recurring image in Ozeri's work of the past five years, inspired by the highly detailed yet dreamlike paintings of 19th century Pre-Raphaelite painters John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. While in past bodies of work the young women have been depicted in feminine clothing and Eden-like settings, in Territory the subject appears in both military uniform and in a flowing dress, set against a rugged ocean landscape. At first glance the images appear photographic, so meticulously rendered are the fine details of wisps of hair, shimmering water droplets or the folds of fabric. But their painted nature is asserted through an idealized veil of softness that transports the subject from the realm of reality to allegory.

The series' title, Territory, alludes to both the physical and emotional states of his subject, presented here as proud defender of the land and as sensuous young woman floating in the ocean. It also refers to Ozeri's own distanced nostalgia for his former homeland, as well as to the complex political situation of Israel.

For Toronto show Ozeri will also present photographs derived from a video depicting female soldiers in uniform, in water, with Simon and Garfunkel's iconic "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" as a soundtrack.

Yigal Ozeri was born in Israel and has lived in New York for the past two decades. He has shown extensively around the world, with recent solo shows in New York, Montreal, Munich, San Francisco, Amsterdam and Copenhagen, and works in international traveling exhibitions Photorealism at the Kunstahalle Tübingen and Museo Thyssen- Bornemisza, and Photorealism Revisited at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. His work is featured in the book Photorealism and the Digital Age, and in prominent permanent collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Jewish Museum of New York, the New York Public Library, the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv Museum in Vienna, Austria.