Leo Ray's new paintings are large-scale, impressive, absorbing, yet nonetheless—soft and delicate, as though pervaded by an enchanting dreamlike atmosphere. They create a panoramic landscape that seeks to draw its viewers into itself, but the landscape then dissolves into foggy mysticism - see the work "Balcony," for example.
Ray's paintings move along the axis of tension between movement in the direction of stabilizing an internal architecture to the painting and the burning desire to unravel the composition, a desire coarsely formalized through the way in which many of the paintings come unraveled at the edges, as it were, and "pour" into abstract painting, into the solitary line, into an agitated flurry of drawing, into a clean, demarcated patch of color, or into an unseen end. See the painting "River," for example.
Ray's paintings, punctuated with large swaths of dense visual information, are seemingly intent on creating a hermetic space of their own, a boundless plane in which the icons are immersed and in which a one-of-its-kind event takes place, a happening that could be framed under the narrative of "Contention and Conservation."
The contention is the postmodernist contention with the past, with the clichés of painting, with familiar quotations from the history of art; and out of that, willy-nilly, conservation is accomplished. The painterly composition replete with transcendent totality can also be read as fluid material that enables fixing and safeguarding, the canvas as a trap which can capture the chaotic permutation at a crucial moment, mark the interference between the thing and color, form, line, medium.
Ray's paintings convey the pure feeling of a breeze come from chaos, a breeze which has been captured, domesticated, and formalized into excellent art.
Moving on to an adjoining gallery one is hit by a captivating range of raucously colored and amusingly drawn paintings by Leo Ray (b. Vilnius, 1950), based on a recurring group of cartoon-like actors, mostly human and feline with the occasional bird, horse and dog tagging along. Ray pulls out all the spectral stops by combining shapes, lines, dots and dashes in unadulterated violets with Kelly green, a bright yolk with flaming magenta and orange backgrounds with electric blue rectangles.
More than being an uninhibited colorist, Ray is an anecdotal painter. Each traditional canvas or larger work assembled from several different size rectangles into a domino-like composition, relates to the human condition as described in fantastic episodes. Domestic encounters, grotesque dreams and perverted events are expressed in an illustrative poster-style using heavy black contours for figures and objects alike. His Everyman is like a clown playing the fool but eternally searching for a deeper meaning to his life. And while digging, Ray's lead character gets involved in the most bizarre predicaments one could imagine. Titles such as "The Right Way of Listening to Bird's Songs", "Soap Bubble Hunter", "The Riddle of the Horse Who Wanted to Cross the Bridge" and "Transparent Philosophical Cat" provide enough fodder for the surreal cannon to blow one's mind.
The most interesting works in the exhibition are the composite pictures in which Ray meshes art historical styles with his own brand of comic drawing. Painted in 2006, each work focuses on a classically rendered female nude in sepia wash grisaille, and is supported by vignettes of explosive abstract expressionist brush marks, flighty calligraphic illustrations and bits and smaller units from his inventive menagerie. These particular works are less colourful than others in the show but are filled with the most harmonious range of disparate elements and textures. Brush and palette knife, transparencies, alla prima, realism and caricature intertwine in a most alluring manner.
Altough Ray's images are fresh and often provocative, their free-wheeling placement on flat planes with no perspective can be associated with the inverted proportions of child's imagination. But his art is much more sophisticated, a clever mixture of Klee, Appel, Rouault and the French poster designer Sauvignac. And what with his poking fun at Velazquez in Artists and Model, 2005, and a combined celebration of Modigliani and Matisse in Reclining Red Nude, 2006, one can add a satirical pinch of irony to Ray's upfront, scrumptious art.
Jerusalem Post, 2006
Art is a very narrow bridge to Ayoka* lands.
Painting is an attempt to create an identity card that would serve as an entrance pass to the temporary camp of those who try to understand a source of vitality.
One who confronts a blank page daily, knows that it is impossible to stay emotionaly uninvolved while placing forms and colors according to their priority.
The painter mobilizes his life experience like a basting stitch binding together different layers and twining them in place, in order to report changes within ourselves and within our environment.
A variety of techniques is used with the freshness of someone who has never painted before. Each brush stroke is for the painter like a new backpack adventure. Leo does not decide what's permitted and what's forbidden in his interpretations. Where will the truck take the painting - a dovecot opening where the wings are fluttering, dreams are blowing and cats are frightened; perhaps they are carried there against their will. There is a fine line between the wisdom of the all-knowing commentator and his seriousness in wishing to expand himself, and between the clown who reduces his experiences to a small bubble. The skill required to blow this bubble inspires admiration and awe for the limitless human ability to reduce and condense.
*Ayoka lands – mythological lands. Ayoka: one who causes joy (editor's note)
2006
For about three years Ray and I were trying to agree on an exhibition. This entailed a number of visits to his studio in the heart of the noisy and sooty industrial area of Tel Aviv, with each visit leaving me with a longing to return for the next.
Ray became known in Israel and in the wider world because of his extraordinarily colorful works. He takes us to a colorful world where fantasy is ruled by a simple childish joy, in which black contours are drawn around figures and objects. Ray has perfected a distinctive and humorous style devoid of coquetry.
We had made a decision to show a series of works which had not been previously exhibited to a wider public and excluded everything with which Ray was associated, even color.
The exhibition consists of "White Landscapes". Thirteen works in oil on white canvas. The background forms a substrate of intensive actions of hiding and revealing, and it is of no less importance than the brush marks and images which it bears.
The works appear to be a break in the years of colorful creation. Most of the works are of the same size and are semi-abstract and sometimes they bear hints of an object, a figure, a story. The white background is different in each work; it is a rich base with a three-dimensional texture. The sensual richness of the background almost invites one to touch, to explore it. The works speak of silence, primeval freshness, space, existence and non-existence, about appearing and disappearing.
The works are based on, and deal with the core of Ray's work - calligraphy, the source of his inspiration. His philosophical attitude to calligraphy as a theory of composition became clear in our talks. He sees calligraphy as a personal art, a discipline which can release one's creativity. It deals with form, tension and relations. It is an art of form and a spiritual journey.
His work is based on preparatory sketches of rhythm and music, of signs and shapes. Music that is devoid of colors or composition of shapes, which, being colorless appears as a feast of color of another kind.
2005
Between sooty garages and gray streets of southern Tel Aviv sits painter Leo Ray and creates his worlds. These worlds are colorful, humorous and disturbing at the same time. A Renaissance scribe writing a message ("You Better Send Me SMS"), a frightened cat standing on his hind paws ("Espresso"), a city in blue, a woman on a balcony ("Balcony"), this and that (and this and this)….
Thus is what he named his latest exhibition that will be opened at the end of July at the Hezi Cohen Gallery.
Leo's speech is reserved, and so are the titles of his works. "This and This" is the title of an exhibition of an artist, a painter and calligrapher who uses the language of art, and not words, sentences or stories.
In a conversation we had in his studio, full of painted canvases and a harsh smell of oil paints, he explained the process of his work. "First of all, the format is important. I wanted to paint large canvases".
Having established the size of the canvases (which had to fit through the narrow staircase leading to his studio), he began the process of painting. First he scanned his sketches which were drawn in black ink in his small sketchbook. He followed this by constructing the composition on a computer, like an architect builds a house. He chose his own drawings and quotes from the history of Art, placed them together and added colored stains to create a harmony which has the unity of time and place.
The large dimensions invite the beholder to a journey, but the power which radiates from the canvases originates not from their size but from the exact handling of the paint and placement of shapes and figures. Precision with a great spirit. Leo Ray applies his colors and shapes without being tempted by the contents or the subject. He is not out to conquer the heart of the beholder. He speaks the language of art (which may seem self-evident), however, unlike the majority of painters, his painting does not begin with a subject which is then translated into visual language.
Leo created his personal and complicated combination of figures, colors, shapes, blobs and lines. This complexity is shown in fascinating colors and in multiple characters, drawn in different styles and joined together by the artist's hand. Surprisingly, the multiplication does not create jitter or discomfort. On the contrary, the variety and the quantity interlace into a balanced composition, which creates a fascinating visual encounter. A kind of collage, a fantastic, associative world in which the eye is attracted to colors, figures and lines. For example, the painting "English Red" is a view through the "windows" which are "torn" in the layers of the rusty-red color. The inspiration for this painting was a rusty and stained sheet-iron gate that caught Leo's eye and heart. The "gate" allows the coexistence of the different worlds and unites them into one, like a building unites many apartments. There is a different world in every apartment, and we, the beholders, are viewing and seeing them. As in life, the simultaneous existence of parallel stories reflect the deep introspection into human mundane and poetic existence; the loneliness, alienation, silence, concentration, a smile, rain and humor.
The "window" of the bright yellow rectangle in the bottom of the painting arrests and leads the eye to the naked woman. Her wilted body droops as she sits immersed in her thoughts and scratches her leg.
The "window" in the upper corner above her contains a man drawn in lines, who may be absent-minded and may be smiling. He walks in the direction of a black area, which leads us to the rain, falling onto a house on the left and the black cloud from which rigid diagonal lines are drawn. As in the Jonathan Geffen's story "The Sixteenth Sheep", the green man on the right is from "another story" As it was said, Leo is not interested in the narrative, but in the end, the story emerges and the viewer is invited to devise it…
Erev Rav
L'acqua che tocchi dei fiumi è l'ultima di quella che andò e la prima di quella cheviene. Così il tempo presente
(Leonardo da Vinci)
The water which you touch in the river is the last of that which has already passed and the first of that which is to come; such is the present
(Leonardo da Vinci)
Leo Ray -- Tradition and Innovation
Joy and Sorrow
Everything is a gift
Leo Ray's paintings embrace the reminiscences of the History of Art and the impressions of our immediate and contemporary life with humor and love. They are always relevant to our most humble human behavior. Our virtues and vices, affected by modern technologies, still leave us, as always, with a longing to remain human, including the behavior which is determined by the most primitive instincts. The lack of compassion, love and care leave a modern man in a constant state of stress and loneliness, with a continuing, desperate search for protection and most of all – for love. As modern life alienates us from others, the lack of relationships between human beings is replaced by the friendship with dogs and cats. We can notice this in Ray's paintings on several occasions. Besides Dog and Cat, the Bird is another specific symbol which dominates his paintings. Leo sometimes feels that he himself, and also others, are transformed into birds whose voices differ one from another, as well as their behavior. Ray's identification with birds springs from his intention to emphasize the symbolism of the human soul, which acts according to the changing moods and circumstances, as birds do. Contrary to Lafontaine, Krilov and Eliezer Steinberg, Leo Ray translated his own vocabulary into non-written fables and proverbs, arranged and painted in rich and vivid colors and shapes.
The identification with birds varies and transfers to other animals, such as the donkey, the horse, the fish and many others. A good fable is short and concentrated in its message; similarly Leo Ray's paintings are clear and simple. Ray can portray the most terrible and scary situation in a simple and open-minded manner that makes it easily understood to a large number of people. He suggests, but does not criticize.
Leo Ray's manner is gentle and his delicate humor raises a smile on the faces of his viewers. Ray is appreciated and respected by the public who do not feel frustrated but happy to be understood and return this feeling as they look at Leo Ray's paintings. The paintings represent a faithful mirror of people's happiness and failures, misfortunes and successes, pains and joys. Ray's Art is indeed a faithful mirror projecting people's lives, environment, culture and dreams. In this respect his paintings tend to present a key that can open the door of consciousness and awareness and lead the beholder to feelings of happiness.
This key also connects between time and space, it enables one to understand oneself more fully in a mirror of the past, connecting it to the present. Leo Ray recreates examples from classical art as a channel connecting the past, the present and the future. Therefore it is an "Infinity". Leo Ray once said, that an artist is a magician. He can transform the images of the past to something more powerful by placing them in a different context. Personages from historical paintings become heroes performing new roles in a drama of modern life.