Yigal Ozeri's 'Genesis' at Mike Weiss Gallery and Charim Galerie

Yigal Ozeri, an Israeli-born artist based in New York for nearly twenty years, presented his exhibition 'Genesis' at Mike Weiss Gallery in New York from January 12 to February 23, 2008, and subsequently at Charim Galerie in Vienna, Austria, from April 25 to June 9, 2008. The exhibition centers on a single model, Priscilla, a young woman raised by hippie parents in the desert north of Maine. Ozeri engaged in extensive discussions with Priscilla before photographing her in her natural environment. Upon returning to New York, he hired a team of academic portraitists to reproduce certain photographs of Priscilla in Maine's forests as paintings. Ozeri's work references John Everett Millais's 'Ophelia,' aiming to transform the Pre-Raphaelite's macabre imagery into a living depiction of erotic ecstasy and fertility. Other mythological allusions include Persephone, representing nature's cycle, and Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, whom Ozeri described as a 'modern Artemis' in Priscilla. The series reflects a renewed interest in nature within contemporary art, echoing 1970s ecological feminism. Ozeri's portraits capture every detail of Priscilla's face—skin tone, eye color, mouth shape, and wind-blown braided hair among branches—making her an allegory of perpetual spring. 'Genesis' aspires to transcend present irony and reach an eternal romantic core where life's meaning rests on nature, fertility, and Eros. The text was written by Robert C. Morgan and translated by Jacques Demarcq.