When viewing a two-person show that juxtaposes the work of a Los Angles painter and a New York painter, the instinct to compare and contrast is natural. The photorealist paintings of Daina Higgins and the expressive figurative paintings of Liat Yossifor originate from distinctly different starting points and converge in an asymmetrical harmony.
The rich cityscape pictures by Daina Higgins capture glances of window displays, lonely streets and urban oddities. Her oil paintings and watercolors glow with a luminous personality, and her spray-painted works hum with twilit electricity. The scenes, which are void of people, vibrate with intimate detail. A hovering sense of fascination and mystery fills the air as daydreams and memories absorb the pavement and city structure.
The aggressively rendered figures in Liat Yossifor’s oil on panel paintings collide, twist and struggle in ambiguous saturated environments. Composed with intense mark making, these churning compositions splice the environmental turbulence of JMW Turner’s sea storms with the shadowy consequences of Francisco Goya’s black paintings. Seething with conflict and searching for solace, the emotional underpinnings in Yossifor’s work project beyond the painterly periphery.
To Here Knows When balances an atmosphere of internal and external currents, where rhythmic restlessness Yossifor’s entanglements resonates with the inward diffusion of Higgins’ urban spaces.
