Us

In his exhibition “Us”, Oded Zaidel presents new paintings, individual and group portraits, most of them created in the shadow of COVID-19. The paintings are all based on photographs taken by the artist’s wife; selfies in the spirit of the current era, which he transforms into paintings on canvas in the spirit of famous scenes and portraits from the history of art.

Zaidel expands his engagement with depiction of figures, after years in which he was identified primarily with the painting of sites devoid of human presence. The portraits surrender the influence of or reference to Ori Reisman’s paintings: scarce use of shading, flattening of the cloth folds, minimum engagement with facial features, as little as necessary to characterize the figure, and nothing more. Zaidel’s paintings, however, have an idiosyncrasy of their own. It is not direct painting of a model, but painting from photographs taken in domestic and private circumstances, or at exhibition openings.