The Artist
Yoel Tordjman
1960 – 2024
Born in Paris in 1960. In Israel since 1989. Self-taught as artist, writer, designer and composer.
Thirty years inside the world of print, art and design came before the work shown here — and before him, generations of printers, setting sacred books by hand. He arrived at painting through the trade of reproduction, which is probably why he never treated a printed surface as finished.
He exhibited in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Paris and New York, and published two books in 2007.
The method
A macro photograph first — a stone, a broken fence, a leaf, the page of a book. Something with no importance of its own.
Then roughly a hundred and fifty translucent layers, painted digitally with a wireless brush. Then print. Then pigment ink and coloured lacquer worked by hand over the printed surface, until the print stopped behaving like one.
Art exists to sublime the soul.
Yoel Tordjman.
Not only the studio
He was a religious man in Tzfat, and the year had a shape to it that the work was part of rather than separate from.
The picture is a family photograph from a Purim table. It is here because an artist is not only the hours at the easel, and because the painting on the wall behind him is his.
The archive
His working drives were recovered and copied in full by the family, and the editions offered here are printed from the master files found on them. The work of reconstructing the complete catalogue is still in progress.
Rights and estate authority are being formalised through the inheritance process.