Black Man By the Water Print

Ofir Dor is a painter, a native of Israel residing in Berlin since 2007. Since graduating from his art studies at the Bezalel Academy in Israel, in 2004, he has been showing large-scale paintings in a lush expressivity, depicting men and women in situations derived from a subliminal zone of dream, the occult and sexual fantasy. Initially working in a more detailed technique, with scenes that bring to mind a dark underworld of esoteric cliques and subcultures – as could be seen in a large one-man show he showed at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art just 3 years following his graduation – his painterly style has evolved into a freeform expressivity that owes as much to abstract expressionism as to the lyrical abstract and other pioneers of Israeli modernism. His characters, often in the nude, confront the viewer with their naïve playfulness and unabashed sensuality, making their surroundings, whether actual interiors or dreamed-up Arcadian landscapes, into the backdrops of sexual escapade.