Colour and gesture are the main formal elements in Ofir Dor's paintings. Thickly impasted, his broad and loose brushstrokes encompass the entire painting. Focusing on the human figure, the artist employs intuitive, free-form pictorial gestures. The range of colours tends to be varied and expressive.
It is through one's gaze that the painted figures relate to each other, dynamically involving themselves with an erotic and voyeuristic nature, as well as in narratives inspired by the history of art. Windows, mirrors and cameras are the means through which one captures images of the other or of oneself in the practice of Selfi.
Art history -as a repository of works and ideas to play with, rather than the esoteric and symbolic- is a constant in Ofir Dor's pictorial practice. His paintings abound not only with references to Arcadian landscapes or idealized rural nature, but also to works by Pierre Bonnard, Van Gogh, Edward Hopper, Cezanne, Gericault and Rubens. Although Hans Hoffman applied his theory of "push-and-pull" to colours, shapes and textures in order to create a visual tension or certain dynamics in the modernist pictorial space, in Dor's paintings this "push-and-pull" takes place in the interaction between the characters through the embodied and intentional gazes. A relational art that takes place in the form of pictorial theatre, in the scenes created on the canvas.
With Dor's work, ideas about painting, the gaze, the history of art, symbolism, relationships, power, and even, in seconds, about the ways we have of thinking these same ideas, are activated. A provocative work that can take the viewer out of his comfort zone.
Ofir Dor, M.F.A. from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 2004, was a visiting professor at Cooper Union, New York, between 1999 and 2000. He has had solo exhibitions at Hayarkon 19 Gallery and Sommer Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv, KunstlerHaus Bethanien and Circle 1 Gallery in Berlin, as well as group exhibitions at the Haifa Art Museum and the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Milan, among others.
