In her most recent body of work, "hello stranger," 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. Maya Bloch lives and works in Tel Aviv.
Maya Bloch, hello stranger, THIERRY GOLDBERG PROJECTS, 5 Rivington Street, New York, NY 10002, through April 3, 2011.
