ON ROTHKO AND SOULAGES: THE COLOUR OF SILENCE
Ouriel Morgensztern
Ouriel Morgensztern was born in Paris in 1976. He graduated in film production and photography from ISTS in Paris. In 1994, Morgensztern settled in Israel for three years to study before moving to New York in 2001, where he enrolled in the SCPS programme at the NYU School of Film Production and Photography. During his time in New York, he worked with fashion photographer Stéphane Sednaoui, assisted on countless photo productions and started showing his work.
For the past ten years, he has focused on art, portraits and commercial photography for private and corporate clients, including many Austrian institutions (such as the Belvedere, the Horten Collection, the Jewish Museum Vienna, the Leopold Museum and many more).
In 2021, Morgensztern opened his latest solo exhibition, “Rendez-Vous à Vienne: A Love Story”, at the Jewish Museum Vienna. The show travelled to Berlin in 2022 and will be seen in Sered, Slovakia, in 2023.
Morgensztern first encountered Mark Rothko’s impressive output while living in New York City and discovered Pierre Soulages’ extraordinary body of work when he visited the museum dedicated to his oeuvre in Rodez, France.
He developed a particular and personal connection to both artists in his own creativity and remains deeply fascinated by their use of light, the profound properties of black as a reflective colour, Mark Rothko’s “Black on Grey” paintings from his later creative period and, obviously, the most emblematic pieces by Pierre Soulage (such as “L’Outre Noir”).
Ouriel Morgensztern’s photography is heavily rooted in abstraction, with a strong fascination for architecture.
This exhibition at the Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre is the result of the encounter between and with Mark Rothko and Pierre Soulages. From New York to the Chapel in Houston (Rothko), to Rodez and the Abbey in Conques (Soulages), and through photos of more personal places in Los Angeles, Tel-Aviv, the French countryside – where Morgensztern is from – and Daugavpils, it emerges a force nourished by the power of the image in its raw state, where the work of Ouriel Morgensztern becomes the link between these two great contemporary artists.
Ouriel Morgensztern is married and has two children.
Exhibition period: 03 March 2023 – 21 May 2023
