Through a Distorted Glass

Matia Oren’s paintings are characterized by a primal, intuitive vision. Shifting between interior and exterior, between external sight and introspection, between the overt and the covert, she paints her life. Her paintings are feverish, intense, at times breathless, akin to a gaze through broken binoculars that have become fixed as such.

Oren, taking her place between memory and the painterly surface, is present and faithful to herself, faithful to painting, through which she can make her claim, like a safety net and a perpetuation of the emotion and thought that accompanied the event she chose to depict.

Oren focuses on swift painting, whether one-off or continuous. Every layer in the painting is rapidly completed, patiently awaiting the next. Whether facing a mirror or a photograph as a reality prosthesis, with sharp, impulsive gestures, she creates a formal and colorful chaos on the canvas, where the traces of her encounter with her realities are recorded. Reality is within, her body its home, and the final product liberates Oren from whatever restricted her.