Yvon Lambert

Yishai Jusidman

25 Oct - 01 Dec 2007

YISHAI JUSIDMAN
"The Economist Shuffle"

New York, NY, October 25, 2007 --- Yvon Lambert is pleased to announce Yishai Jusidman’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. The Economist Shuffle features sixteen new oil and egg tempera paintings on wood. The exhibition will be on view from October 25th through December 1st, 2007 at Yvon Lambert New York Project Space, 564 West 25th Street and is open Wednesday through Saturday from 12 pm - 6 pm. A reception for the artist will be held at the gallery on Thursday, October 25th from 6-8 pm. Yishai Jusidman’s newest series resorts to news thumbnail pictures lifted from the "The World this Week" section in The Economist magazine. For a few years now, he says, his chosen imagery has rested solely on his impression that the particular photograph may turn into a good painting. The fleeting drama of everyday events is seized and clutched in Jusidman’s painstakingly rendered works, since there is no escape from the associations generated by what is illustrated in the pictures. Yet also in them, the transient quality of news images is collapsed into the timeless quality of painting, where we might find snippets of Caravaggio, Corot, Monet, Friedrich, as well as an implicit wink to newsprint inspired painters such as Warhol and Richter. Thus, instead of foregrounding a politicized agenda, Jusidman aims to subjugate politically minded art to his own aesthetic terms. The pieces in The Economist Shuffle are layered concoctions of mediation and information calculated to activate “an abrasive merging of otherwise incompatible predispositions in the viewer”. The artist refers, of course, to the age-old artistic dichotomy of purposiveness/aestheticism. The purposive aspect of these paintings derives from the artist’s deliberate sourcing of the images, and the aestheticist aspect is articulated by their softened oil and egg tempera technique. Gilded frames in turn crown the display by giving a purpose —as in commercial packaging—to their aestheticism, while further aesthetizing the pictures’ purposiveness. Yishai Jusidman was born in Mexico City, in 1963, and now lives and works in Los Angeles. Solo museum shows include mutatis mutandis/Working Painters at S.M.A.K., Ghent, Belgium (2002); MEIAC, Badajoz, Spain (2002) and MARCO, Monterrey, Mexico (2003); Sumo/en-treat-ment at Museo Carrillo Gil, Mexico City, (1999) and Pictorial Investigations, a traveling show organized by Otis College of Art and Design (1996-98). Jusidman’s work was featured at Harald Szeemann’s Platform of Humankind in the 2001 Venice Biennale; Eco: Contemporary Art from Mexico, Reina Sofía, Madrid, (2005) and Ultrabaroque, Aspects of post-Latin American Art, which traveled to MOCA San Diego, SF MOMA, Walker Art Center, MAM Miami, (2000-03). Jusidman’s work is featured in Vitamin P, New Perspectives in Painting (Phaidon Press, 2003). A survey show is being organized by the Museo de Arte Moderno Mexico City for November 2008. Yishai Jusidman’s work can be found in major collections worldwide including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, S.M.A.K., Ghent, Beligium, the Daros Collection, Zurich, KIASMA, Helsinki, the Jumex Collection, Mexico City and the Biblioteca Nacional de Espana.
 

Tags: Harald Szeemann, Andy Warhol