Born in Israel in 1958, Yigal Ozeri is now based in New York. He is most known for his photorealistic paintings, executed in thousands of brushstrokes.
Central to his works are images of young women surrounded by nature or with simple backdrop. Ozeri captures their connection to nature, but focuses on the females whereas the background remains a blur. Ozeri uses his own photographies as templates for his paintings of the women which he depicts multiple times in series on canvas or paper.
With the models seeming dreamy and lost in thought, in what appears to be coincidental positions some of his works remind us of film stills. In others the women engage direct eye contact with the viewer. Influenced by preraffaelites Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Milias, a special, almost mystique atmosphere is often inherent to his works. With his art, Ozeri creates his very own narrative. His hyperrealstic painting blurs the borders between what is real and what is fantasy.
During recent years he has been engaging intensely with the medium of graphic art. He is taking this path together with Gary Lichtenstein, a luminary in the field of screen printing. Lichtenstein has been active in this field since the 1970s and has supported such greats as Robert Indiana, Marina Abramovic and Richard Meier in bringing their artistic visions to paper with the help of screen printing. Ozeri and Lichtenstein have chosen screen printing as the ideal translation of Ozeri’s painting into printmaking. Since screen printing requires a separate screen for each color and thus a separate printing process – and since Ozeri’s hyperrealistic portraits usually consist of many different colors and shades, the transition is a complex undertaking. Here is, where the inventiveness and expertise of a master printer are needed. Gary Lichtenstein and Yigal Ozeri together have succeeded in implementing hyperrealism, as an artistic discipline in screen printing.