The oil paintings of Liora Ostroff, with varying textures and contemporary imagery, call upon the history of the form. With her lush environments and occasionally morbid edges, she navigates humanity in both vulnerable and surreal terms.
“Liora Ostroff’s current body of work uses paired art-historical themes with imagery drawn from contemporary life,” a recent statement says. “Giotto’s architectural compositions meet Baltimore’s brick facades, and stiff groupings of saints become young partygoers and couples. She references Da Vinci’s lyrical hand gestures or Van Eyck’s colorful motifs to compose a new scene. Either violent or serene, these paintings exemplify Ostroff’s contemplations on time, place, politics and the self. Lust devolves into a misandrist fantasy; a quiet Shabbat table setting is overcome with swastikas. The incessant specter of droning helicopters over the city replaces the glow and radiance of angels, which are so ubiquitous in the Renaissance compositions. In these paintings, history and the present collapse in on each other.”
See more of Ostroff’s work below.
Calling his surreal paintings “suspended moments,” artist