Opening: Thursday, 21.02.2025, at 12:00

Ofer Rotem’s artworks, in graphite on museum board, explore the world of lines, scribbles and smudges, and inhabit two parallel spheres: at first glance, the image appears realistic and true to reality, but on a second, closer look, a new and wonderous world appears, in which a multitude of imaginary creatures reveal themselves to the viewer. The show will exhibit key works, created during the years 2015-2025.

Ofer Rotem renders astonishing virtuoso depictions of landscapes, tangled vegetation, figures, and cinematic urban spaces. His work is anchored in traditional realism’s various genres. In his landscapes, he aspires to construct a richly detailed pastoral scene, while his renderings of urban environments reveal his fascination with light and glass reflections, which inspire him to take up the challenges of depicting optical effects of various types.
Rotem is a realist artist in the deep sense. Despite his being a true virtuoso with a pencil, his preferred medium, he’s not satisfied with “copying reality”. When he depicts a landscape, for example, he doesn’t try to stay “true to the source”, first and foremost because he isn’t sure he knows what the source is… Is the source the objective world “out there”, or is it the subjective consciousness which perceives the world at any given moment “in here”? To be on the safe side, Ofer renders both. One interweaving with the other. The result is a fascinating dialogue between a consciousness that observes and a consciousness that dictates.
Every artwork presents a homogenous and recognizable image – a complex texture of content and formal tactics, but a closer look will reveal many small areas lacking definite borders, each one displaying a microcosmos and a separate arena of activity. Rotem “plants” various unrelated elements within the realistic image, derived from a richly imaginative world.

Ofer Rotem (born in Israel, 1953), graduated from the Bezalel Art Academy in 1981. Between 1982 and 2010 he resided and worked in the U.S. Since 2010 he has been living and working in Israel. Rotem exhibited his work in solo and group shows in the U.S. and in Israel. His work is included in important private and public collections. Rotem, a recipient of the Shiff Prize for figurative-realistic art (2015), had a solo exhibition, accompanied by a catalogue, at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2016).