Shimon Okshteyn
Dialogues With History
Opening November 15, 2025
Online: ongoing
In-person: by appointment
Black & White Galley / Project Space is pleased to present its fourth and final exhibition with The Estate of Shimon Okshteyn that focuses on the years 2005 to 2010, a brief but critical juncture in the artist’s evolution, marking a radical departure from his earlier practice and distinct from the works that would follow.
During these years, a masterful colorist and visual storyteller, Okshteyn created works of striking visual and psychological complexity. Treating history as a material to be worked with, he reanimated the historical works from the select Dutch Golden Age and modern artists through the lens of contemporary life. The result is a series of paintings in which classical motifs and present-day symbols intertwine, transforming inherited images into new visual experiences that coalesce into a richly tapestried collective history.
"Okshteyn is a force to contend with. His well-informed appropriationist tendencies are abetted by the artist’s urge towards classical traditions that balance gloomy introspection against outward looking strength. Add to this a coherent yet surprising use of thematic material, a richness of invention, and systematized build up of narrative — all of these aspects make Okshteyn’s work irresistibly attractive to the eye —a haptic feast laced with megatonic power." ___Dominique Nahas, New York City
Photo: Shimon Okshteyn at the Southampton Art Center / East End Collected (EEC 4), 2018
Image: Shimon Okshteyn, STILL LIFE WITH DIAMOND SKULL, 2010 / After Aelbert Janz van den Schoor, Vanitas Still Life (Skulls on Table), c. 1660