Maya Bloch


EscapeIntoLife-MayaBloch1Untitled, 2011, acrylic on canvas, 59 x 47 inches

EscapeIntoLife_MayaBloch2Untitled, 2010, acrylic and oil on canvas, 59 x 47 inches

EscapeIntoLife_MayaBloch3Untitled, 2010, acrylic on canvas,  47 x 36 inches

EscapeIntoLife_MayaBloch4Untitled, 2010, acrylic and oil on canvas,  59 x 47 inches

EscapeIntoLife_MayaBloch5Untitled, 2010,. oil and acrylic on canvas, 59 x 47 inches

EscapeIntoLife_MayaBloch6Untitled, 2011, oil and acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 inches

EscapeIntoLife_MayaBloch7Untitled, 2010,  oil and acrylic on canvas, 59 x 47 inches

EscapeIntoLife_MayaBloch8no info available

EscapeIntoLife_MayaBloch9Untitled, 2009, pencil on paper,  9 x 12 inches

EscapeIntoLife -MayaBloch10no info available

 

About the Artist

Maya Bloch was born in Be’er Sheva, Israel in 1978, and currently lives and works in Tel Aviv. She holds a B.A. and an M.A. from Tel Aviv University. She has had solo exhibitions at Thierry-Goldberg Projects, as well as at the Haifa Museum of Art, at Sangallo Art Station Gallery in Florence, Italy  and at Tavi Dresdner Gallery in Tel Aviv. Her work was also included in group exhibitions at PPOW Gallery, New York; Marlborough Gallery, New York; The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Brooklyn, NY; Artistsʼ House, Jerusalem; Office in Tel Aviv Gallery; and HAKITA Gallery, Tel Aviv.

About Maya Bloch’s Paintings

Maya Bloch’s paintings reproduce so vividly—the saturated hues of the fig­ures leaching into arresting, subsidiary stains, forms and patterns—that one might suspect a printing error, that the real things cannot possibly measure up. But measure up they did in this tight exhibition (Waiting RoomThierry Goldberg Projects, 2010) of seven acrylics on canvas, all 2009 or 2010.

Despite their frequent concentration on singular figures, Bloch’s paintings are not portraits, as the individuals are spared any identifying characteristics. The artist has even refrained from titling her works, delegating this task to the gallery, which has obliged with simple, unobtrusive designations. Instead of the figures, it’s the surrounding textures and details that often attract attention.  (via)

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“Francis Bacon is an obvious influence on the Tel Aviv-based artist Maya Bloch, but her disfigured, de-contextualized portraits based on found photos are more melancholy than overtly violent……. Bloch’s acrylic figures are perpetually liquifying. Colors swirl together creating unexpected new tones; paints seep across borders, blurring lines between figure and field, interior and exterior.

Sad, pleading faces are the sharpest details in the seven new canvases, expressing a mix of terror, anger and fearful anticipation as the loose bodies around them seem poised to melt away. Like the barely-there bodies in Homunculi, Bloch’s portraits dissolve into their surroundings, pushing the messy neo-figurative trend to its fuzzy edges.” (via)

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In her most recent body of work, hello stranger, (Thierry Goldberg Projects, 2011) Israeli artist Maya Bloch continues to set herself free from the tyranny of the literal world and creates this new one, in liquid silver, where she introduces a cast of characters that peer through the paint that, mask-like, encases them. A painter’s painter, Bloch’s spare use of color and bleeding pigmentation makes one sense that certain elements were created while on a horizontal surface, with their colors running into each other in inky pools of black and umber. The figures are simultaneously dead and alive, and their collective gaze vibrates somewhere between suspicion and brutal honesty.  (via)

About Maya Bloch’s Drawings

To me, her work is that hit-you-over-the-head kind of art that makes you wonder why this artist’s name isn’t always on the tip of your tongue.  One of the most appealing aspects to her work are the dreamy, timeless spaces they inhabit.  Many of her pieces feel like memories or old photographs but the figures engage with the viewer in what feels like very contemporary ways. Maya is able to produce an astounding range of effects with few materials.  As someone who is guilty of using the whole box of crayons whenever making a picture, I look to her work for a reminder that complex, resonate imagery can be made with just a pencil and eraser. (Corey Corcoran via)

Maya Bloch Bio




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