Artist Statement/ Biography

Shay Arick is a multidisciplinary artist working across mediums and themes. In the last couple of years, he focuses on two distinct art practices: Oil pastel drawings and sculptural plant constructions. These different works live side by side, one practice feeding the other, though the resulting works vary dramatically in both visual approach and content from each other. His oil pastel drawings are composites of abstraction and dream-like metaphors contained in compressed spaces. The works are framed by thick shaped foam in various colors and densities. Arick architectural plants are created with intuition, where he delves into a child-like process. He collects flowers and weeds, cut the stems, connect leaves, and assembles the various parts into new kinds of plants.

--

Shay Arick is an Israeli visual artist based in Brooklyn and Tel Aviv. Arick is a recipient of Murphy Cadogan Contemporary Arts Award, Eileen Cooper Award For Creativity, and HaPais Council for the Culture and Arts Artist Grant among others. He received support through many residencies and fellowships, including Residency Unlimited, SIP Fellowship, The Watermill Center, Kadist Foundation, MASS MoCA, BRIC, Wassaic Project, and Ox-Bow. His work has been shown in venues such as Haifa Museum of Art (Haifa), Watermill Center (New York), SOMarts (San Francisco), Contemporary Arts Center (New Orleans), OnSpace (Beijing), Y Gallery (New York), ZIZ Space (Tel Aviv). Arick holds an MFA in Sculpture from The San Francisco Art Institute, and BFA from Bezalel Academy, Israel.