A snow avalanche, a treasure chest, a group portrait of fishermen, a busy restaurant, a tree with a bird's nest. In the new solo exhibition Lost Treasure, Ofer Shomron presents a broad, layered body of work – paintings in various sizes from the past two years – that are cast as a fraught, conscious realm, busy and colorful. This exhibition does not seek to coalesce around a single stated topic but operates from multiplicity: images, styles, emotional states, and unstable relations between representation and abstraction. Even the artistic treatment is uneven. Sometimes the painting is quick, a bit sloppy and flat, and at other times the work is heavier, verging on impasto.
The eclecticism is not random – it is the result of an ongoing search, like a journey into the painting and perhaps also the psyche. It is the way to a lost treasure.
Some of the works are figurative and can be defined as magical realism: seemingly everyday scenes, solitary figures in domestic or interior spaces, objects that appear familiar yet strange. The reality in these paintings is gently disrupted—in proportions, color, missing views—creating a sense of another time, of a moment frozen before or after an unseen event. Alongside these are works that border on abstraction, in which the painterly gesture, the layers of color, and the tension between light and matter replace the clear narrative and offer a more physical and direct experience.
There is also (considerable) humor in Shomron's works, and it is almost subversive: it pops up in small details, slightly ridiculous compositions, unexpected color choices, proportions, or erroneous perspective. But this is bitter humor, the kind that does not dispel the tension but rather emphasizes it. A sense of disaster hovers beneath the surface - not as a one-time

dramatic event, but as an ongoing condition, like a quiet awareness that something fundamental has been thrown off-balance. The paintings exist in the space between lightness and heavy shadow, between play and a pinch.

The transition from the figurative and the abstract, from narrative to formative turbulence, is not hierarchical. Shomron allows each work to stand on its own, but together they create a cumulative movement of observing the world as a disintegrating space that is also full of potential. Lost Treasure does not seek to point out the treasure or restore it, but rather to remain within the act of searching – a pictorial, emotional, and existential act in which the loss itself becomes a source of meaning.
Shomron's path in the art world does not follow the "accepted" route. He is not a graduate of an art academy, began painting relatively late in life, and acquired his education mainly through master classes in other artists' studios. His painting refuses to adhere to any distinct tradition and certainly does not fit into the historical continuum of the local painting. Thus, in many ways, he is free from obligations and schools of thought, operating in a wilder and more surprising field.