PORTLAND, ORE.- Yishai Jusidman’s Prussian Blue is a series of paintings rendered almost exclusively in Prussian Blue. One of the earliest artificially developed pigments used by European painters, its historical implications overpower its formal and optical potential. Discovered in 1704 in Berlin, it soon became the emblematic tint of the Prussian army and one of the earliest artificial pigments used by European painters. The color is also linked, through the grimmest of histories, to the extermination of European Jewry in the Second World War. The pesticide employed in the Nazi gas chambers, Zyklon B, left colored traces on their walls when its lethal compound chemically mutated into Prussian blue residues, some of which are visible to this day.

Tensions between color and history, perception and materiality, picture and painting, refinement and horror, are the subject of the series Yishai Jusidman (b. 1963, Mexico City) began in 2010. While the challenges of dealing with the Holocaust’s legacy were mostly eschewed by post-war painters, Jusidman proposes that painting might in fact reflect, and not only reflect on, the Holocaust. The imagery submitted by his brush captures—or, rather, recaptures—both excruciating presences and overwhelming desolation, plunging us into the labyrinths of historical and common memory.

"The atrocities that we are forced to consider when we think about the annihilation of European Jewry is further enhanced with Jusidman’s powerful rendering of images of the death camps. The color – Prussian blue – is eerily beautiful but also utterly ominous and brings to mind Gerhard Richter’s The Birkenau Paintings that similarly employ color to address the appalling impact of historical trauma." -Judy Margles, OJMCHE Executive Director

Featuring five landscape paintings of the grounds of camps such as Birkenau and Sobibor, and a set of thirty cyanotypes shown here for the first time, the exhibition confronts the prohibitions of our collective imagination while enabling one of the painting’s most notorious attributes: making silence speak.

Yishai Jusidman, a Mexican artist of Jewish heritage currently based in Los Angeles, explores the history of paint and painting, and presents it through a contemporary lens. His noteworthy solo exhibitions include Prussian Blue, Americas Society, New York (2013) and MUAC, Mexico City (2016–17); Paintworks, Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City (2009); The Economist Shuffle, Yvon Lambert Gallery, New York (2007); and mutatis mutandis/Working Painters, which traveled to SMAK in Ghent, Belgium, MEIAC in Badajoz, Spain, and MARCO in Monterrey, Mexico (2002–3). His paintings have been featured in such international group exhibitions as the 2014 SITE Santa Fe Biennial; the 2001 Venice Biennale; ARS 01, KIASMA, Helsinki, Finland (2001); and Ultrabaroque: Aspects of Post-Latin American Art, which traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Miami Art Museum (2000–2003). Jusidman’s work is often included in panoramic exhibitions of Mexican contemporary art, as in The Era of Discrepancy, Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City (2007); Echo—Contemporary Art from Mexico, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2003); and Soleils du Mexique, Petit Palais, Paris (2000).

Social Forms: Art As Global Citizenship is curated by Christian Viveros-Fauné and organized by Converge 45 and its institutional partners as part of its 2023 citywide exhibition. With more than 50 artists presenting work at over 15 venues spanning the city of Portland, the exhibition centers on the idea of art as a social form: contemporary and historical artworks that ask us to consider global power shifts taking place in contemporary society.

Converge 45 supports Portland’s creative ecosystem by promoting the work of artists and organizations in the Pacific Northwest and improving access to broader art discourses within our communities.

The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education explores the legacy of the Jewish experience in Oregon, teaches the universal lessons of the Holocaust, and provides opportunities for intercultural conversation. Through exhibitions and public programming, OJMCHE focuses on Jewish art, history, and culture, while simultaneously recognizing the challenge of remaining relevant in a changing and tumultuous world. OJMCHE challenges our visitors to resist indifference and discrimination and to envision a just and inclusive place for all to live.

Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education
Yishai Jusidman: Prussian Blue
August 24th, 2023 – December 10th, 2023