Not Everything Is Rosy: Yossi Lubelsky

Who is Yossi Lubelski in the realm of painting? Is he his father’s child or his child’s father? This ever-growing and echoing question opens his new exhibition, presenting a creative and life process spanning eighteen years. The process, which began as an exploration of the concept of fatherhood from a father’s perspective, was interrupted, remained within the flow of life, and has only now resumed in order to reach its reconciled completion.

The exhibition’s title, Not Everything Is Pink, takes on a double meaning here: on the one hand, it declares Lubelski’s dramatic choice to shed the rich, warm colors associated with him in favor of plunging into a restrained palette of blues. On the other hand, it is a direct confrontation with the complexity of life, loss, and exposed emotions.

The sea serves here as both a visual and an inner metaphor: an ocean of memories and ancient longing, growing stronger within the relationship between son and father—and vice versa. In the paintings’ compositions, the sea is not merely a passive background, but an active presence that envelops the figures, connects them, and gives the moment a sense of quiet, compassion, and intimacy. Alongside the large oil paintings are preparatory charcoal drawings, revealing the initial lines of thought that form the emotional and formal skeleton of the works.

The contemplation of this relationship acquires deep symbolic and emotional significance through the background colors. The encounter between ochre yellow, cobalt blue, and white creates a space moving between earth and sky, between human warmth and infinity, and between matter and spirit. Ochre yellow gives the images a sense of memory, rootedness, and warmth. Cobalt blue opens the gaze toward the depths of the sea and the psyche. White unites them, bringing light, breath, and calm. This pictorial envelope carries the emotional charge of the work and intensifies the sense of closeness and reconciliation.

At the heart of the exhibition, however, stands the transformation the artist himself underwent over the passing years. Life continued, and during that time his parents died. Through this loss, Lubelski discovered that orphanhood is not a matter of age. After their deaths, he found himself embarking on a new existential search—a search that led to a complete transformation of his identity on the canvas. The person who began the series nearly two decades ago as a father observing his son completes it by becoming the child in the paintings himself: the orphaned child searching for his parents.

In the exhibition’s large painting, Lubelski seeks to connect with his mother through her act of knitting. The painting becomes a metaphor for life itself: on the one hand, a person calmly knits for himself the sweater of his life and memories; yet on the other hand, unraveling is always present. The exhibition is a moment of wholeness and reconciliation, an open invitation to contemplate the threads of family life as they unravel and intertwine within a blue ocean of farewell and consolation.

Language editing: Dr. Amit Kama