Joshua Raz

Joshua Raz works mostly with oil on canvas, his paintings are marked by a complex interweaving of images and lines. The figures in his paintings are depicted either as merging into the surrounding landscape or serving as a connection between two levels of the landscape's strata, resulting in a sense of instability. Through the use of spliced landscapes and distorted perspectives, Raz questions the reliability of two-dimensional images and seeks to subvert their authority through a process of reinterpretation. Raz's paintings also embody a history of visual imagination, much like the land holds countless forgotten stories buried beneath the surface. He addresses a cultural change where the emphasis has shifted from placing importance on external facts to valuing individual emotions as a means of defining reality. By depicting different characters experiencing the same moment within the same landscape, Raz explores the impact of individual experiences on one's internal representation of a place. "As an artist who includes people within my work, I hope that my paintings hint at anthropological peculiarities," Raz says. ...

Online viewing rooms so often surrender the most valuable and treasured part of viewing paintings: time. PPP makes space for the precious time we’ve lost online. They have made the move to an exhibition based platform, supporting artists with committed exposure, engaging dialogues and unwavering focus on their painting. Time spent engaging with an artists’ work is often cut short in galleries, as the art world continually demands the next and new. By encouraging us to look for longer, PPP places processes of cogitation at the forefront of the onlooker’s attention. Their platform becomes a repository for the longevity of both the painting and the painter. In feeding the desire of art lovers to look for longer, PPP indulges a painting’s most powerful effect: its capacity to inspire. ...