Mixed Emotions

Ofir Dor

Ofir Dor's works focus upon emotional states and conflicts. By means of monumental compositions, which are covered with dynamic and highly expressive brushstrokes, he distills a series of unique emotions - intimacy, fear, jealousy, love or the pain of parting. Dor resuscitates here a traditional genre that has become almost obsolete - figurative paintings in which allegory is embodied in personified concepts and emotions, and whose dramatic contents can be deciphered with the help of the works' titles. Some of the paintings were inspired by dreams. Most of the scenes take place in unidentified interiors with diagonal windows and openings. The charged human interactions portrayed on canvas are thus dramatic reconstructions of fragments of dreams, nightmares or hallucinations - a fact that amplifies the psychologically intense qualities with which they are saturated. Like the "return to painting" that characterized the Italian Transavantgarde and the German Neo-Expressionism movements during the '80s, here too violence and sexuality erupt alongside feelings of pain and loneliness.

Born in Ramatayim, 1972; lives and works in Tel Aviv.