Selected Exhibitions

Once Upon a Time

ISE Foundation Gallery, New York, 2008.


A Need to Worry

Duo exhibition with Sandra Mack-Valencia, Abrazo Gallery, New York, 2008.


Fresh Paint Art Fair

The Young Israeli Art Fair, Tel Aviv, 2008.


Necrosis

Duo exhibition with Nivi Alroy, Gallery 207, New York, 2008.


Christmas Machine

MFK Gallery, Berlin, 2008.


Artist Statement

I borrow from images of women embedded in the collective memory and retell their story through my own voice. I am looking for simple situations where our most fundamental needs are being exposed. The women in my watercolor paintings are eating, sleeping or interacting with other figures. I question these domestic activities by blurring the borders of what's defined “normative”.

Behind this naive appearance, an odd world is revealed, where human contacts and spaces are no longer safe. Eating becomes devouring, sleeping becomes disappearing and the outside is penetrating the inside.

The paintings also feature interiors and natural spaces. I see them as a theater setting or actor's props. They contains a world of human complexity, where constant struggle is also a place of silence and richness of colors.

'Memory Swamp' - a recurring theme in my work, is a repository where personal demons and memories collide.

I'm interested in the dynamic nature of memories, constantly recreated through the act of remembering. Our mind is reshaping our original experiences while our body remembers what has been locked away. Watercolor paintings and drawings reveal a psychological tension, where figures and interiors are portrayed in strong, alluring colors.

In painting, I stand in the morass, partially numb, not knowing where the body ends and the swamp begins, I look out and I try to describe.

Opening Scene from Riget (The kingdom) -1994

About & Contact

Galia Offri is an Israeli artist living in New York since 2005. Galia received her BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Arts, Jerusalem in 2003. She then worked as a senior art instructor in the Petach-Tikva Museum of Contemporary Art. Her work has been exhibited since 2003 in New York, Berlin and Israel. In 2008 she had her first solo show in New York City, with a cover article in the Manhattan Times.

Download full Resume (PDF)

e-mail: Galia [at] GaliaOffri [dot] com