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Liat Yossifor

 

Yossifor was trained at UC Irvine, California, at the height of the cultural war debates. Her work then was a series of sociopolitical portraits that were etched in great detail onto monochromatic fields. These portraits were buried in single color fields, in shades of red, white, and black. They only came to life with a certain direction of light and the position of the viewer in front of them. They were a kind of a “Dawning of an aspect,” to borrow from Wittgenstein. This work over time evolved into abstractions that are portraits of events instead of portraits of people. The new abstractions are time-restricted, repeated, and body-aware; they speak to a cycle of trauma and belatedness. Their subject is entirely a state of mind, and is formed over time by thinking of these works in groupings of paintings and memories. In these abstractions, a delicate balance between cognition and action forms a pictorial space which coexists in tension with the painting as a record of an event. The abstractions are grounded in the artist’s movement and are generated by utilizing a process that resembles automatic drawing. Yossifor attacks, scores, and interacts with the paint to create textural lines and structures that echo drawings; these drawing features are subsequently buried in the ensuing layers of paint. The work is also done entirely in paint, but describes different material states, from stone relief and ceramics to body prints. 
 
Liat Yossifor received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1996, and her MFA from the University of California, Irvine, in 2002. Select solo exhibitions include Pre-Verbal Painting, The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; Expanding on an expansive subject, The Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena; Time Turning Paint, Pitzer College Art Galleries, Broad Center, Claremont; Double Life, Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt; Movements, Ameringer McEnery Yohe, New York, NY; A Body of Water, Patron Gallery, Chicago; The Stand, Paramo Gallery, Guadalajara, Mexico; and The Tender Among Us at the Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont. Group exhibitions include Modulacions, Museo de Arte de Sinaloa in Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico, and Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Jal., Mexico; Grafforists, Torrance Art Museum, CA; Stolen Gestures, Kunsthaus Nurnberg, Germany; Subject, Lyman Allyn Museum, New London, CT; New Works, The Margulies Collection, Miami, FL; From America, Museum of Modern Fine Arts, Minsk, Belarus; The Third Wight Biennial, New Wight Gallery, UCLA, CA; and The End, Deep River, LA, CA. Select public collections include Creative Artist Agency (CAA), Los Angeles, CA; Isabel and Agustin Coppel Collection (CIAC), Mexico City, Mexico; The Marguilles Collection, Miami, FL; Minnesota Museum of American Art, Saint Paul, MN; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), CA and The Hammer Museums, Los Angeles, CA. 
28.04.2022 – 25.06.2019
Villa Aurora Fellowship
in cooperation with 68projects

28.04.2022 – 25.06.2019
the gray feather a thrush lost
68projects
Fasanenstr. 68
10719 Berlin

Hyperallergic
The Tension in Liat Yossifor’s Paintings
John Yau, May 29th 2021

May 2021

09.11. – 14.11.2019
B.A.T. State III: Women Artists in Conversation with El Nopal Press
Carolyn Campagna Contemporary Art Museum
1250 N Bellflower Blvd
Long Beach, CA 90840

January 2020

02.12.2018 – 17.02.2019
A houndered years and counting
Minnesota Museum of Art
350 Robert St N
St Paul, MN 55101, USA

27.04.2018 – 30.09.2018
Modulaciones
Zapopan Jalisco
Prol. 20 De Noviembre 166, Zapopan,
45100 Zapopan, Jal., Mexiko

01.12.2017 – 18.03.2018
Modulaciones
Museo de Arte de Sinaloa in Culiacán
Calle Gral Rafael Buelna Tenorio S/N, Primer Cuadro,
80000 Culiacán Rosales, Sin., Mexiko
Hyperallergic
The Tension in Liat Yossifor’s Paintings
John Yau, May 29th 2021

The Nomadic Journal
Disembodiment in the work of Liat Yossifor
Susan Power, May 2020

Interviews from Yale University Radio
Liat Yossifor
Brainard Carey, 26.06.2018

El Diario, NTR
Modulaciones‘, un recorrido plástico en el MAZ
Alejandro Carrillo, 27,04.2018

The Art Section – Interview
Alla Prima: Painters in Dialogue
Erin Lawlor, 2018

Codigo Magazine
Lo Mejor de 2016 por Artes Visuals
César García, December 2016

Newcity Art
Sifting Through the Waves of Time
Brit Baron, 25.11.2016

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Dance in Gray Mass
Christoph Schütte, 18.05.2016

Pitzer  College Art Galleries Catalogue
Painting at the Crossroads
Glenn Harcourt, 2016

Liat Yossifor – Letters Apart
Paintings by Liat Yossifor
Poems by Ed Schad
Published in English
2023
Softcover with die-cut window and flaps
96 pages
Copublished with LaVerne University

Liat Yossifor – Communicating Vessels
Published in English
2021
Hardcover
44 pages
Published by Miles McEnery Gallery

Liat Yossifor – No Second Chances in the Land of a Thousand Dances
Published in English
2020
35 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9925137-1-9
Published by Jawpress / Fox Jensen Gallery

Liat Yossifor – Embodiment and Abstraction
Published in English
2018
Hardcover
36 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0999487143
Published by Miles McEnery Gallery

Liat Yossifor – Movements
Published in English
2016
88 pages
ISBN-13:978-0983254079
Published by DoppelHouse Press

Liat Yossifor – Time Turning Paint
Published in English
2015
56 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9966445-1-8
Published by Pitzer College Art Galleries

Liat Yossifor – the tender among us
Published in English
2007
24 pages
Published by Pomona College Museum of Art