Arik Brauer
(Translated from German, Yacobovitz Gallery Catalogue, Israel, 1977)
Avri has found his own color scale. A tonic interpenetration, which distributes the weights evenly over the surface. When you look at these images, you feel that the sun has just subsided and that the most beautiful hour of the day came between light and darkness.
"Avri hat eine eigene Farbscala gefunden. Ein toniges Ineinanderfliessen, welches die Gewichter gleichmassig uber die Bildflache verteilt. Man hat beim Betrachten dieser Bilder das Gefuhl, dass soeben die Soone untergegangan ist, und das die schonste Stunde des Tages zwischen Licht und Dunkelheit anbrach."
Jeruselem Post Magazine
("Ein Hod," Israel, Oct 8, 1971)
Avri Ohana – since his last exhibition at Ein Hod seven years ago, he has, like so many others, gone over from realism from abstraction, but at the same time, has preserved coherence by deep setting and an erotic strain, inherent in the abstract, elements and more literately in the drawings.
Lois E. Nesbitt
(Artforum, September 1989)
In these landscapes Avri Ohana evokes subtle atmospheres of shimmering light, using gestures that have a sketchy energy... Paint accumulates to create surfaces resembling walls that have been painted too many times, the streaks and strokes of successive applications clearly visible.
The spaciousness of his landscapes is often compressed by rectangles that fill in the background and frame the looser brushstrokes. Ohana’s compositions are free of more specific references that might indicate scale or localize the scene. They are sometimes empty but never desolate...
Ohana’s works are virtual wonderlands of rich, ripe, multicolored “prime” paintings, then multitudinous paintings-within-paintings. Vistas open up within vistas, while deceptively simple interiors disclose a multitude of other presences…
There is a strong sense of nature in Ohana’s works – and expression of freshness, open spaces, and far horizons of the outdoors…
Ohana’s works are a playland of old with new, the primitive with the sophisticated, the ordinary with the fantastic. Treats for the eye, the senses, and imagination – those are the works that make up the strange, uninhibited aesthetic territory of Avri Ohana…
Garrit Henry
(Critic for Art in America)
Rebecca Rass
(Terminal Art Journal,
Israel, 2006)
FROM CASABLANCA TO THE WEST VILLAGE
(Feb. 10, 2018)
Avri Ohana is a multi style artist for whom the freedom to create, experiment in any style, is of essence. His talent, honed skill, and discipline makes this possible. He paints fast and thoroughly, he paints a lot and always, in any found location. At any time Avri is not one, but at least four painters assembled under one name.
Avri refuses to limit his creativity to one style or another. He allows himself the freedom to respond to an inner impulse directing him toward different paths; to experiment and experience, to return to a path already traveled, or to choose a new path.
Regardless of his variety of styles, it is possible to recognize his clear hand and similar painterly elements in most of his paintings: rich use of color, a sweeping optimism through his expressive brushstrokes, and varying choice of materials….
“Abstract? Figurative? Surrealistic? Collage? These are just names through which I try to arrive at some painterly truth,” emphasizes Avri. “…Any path that leads me there is the right one.”
“The abstract as well as the figurative are hiding in reality’s folds, one only needs to recognize them.
A radio interview with Avri Ohana and Ken Sobel for "Art Chat" on Pawling Public Radio WPWL