Gala Oelsner is an Israeli-American artist whose work includes painting, sculpture, ceramic, mixed-media, and photography. "I moved to the United States from Israel in 1999. Coming from a different culture, I am exploring my relationship with the home where I grew up and the place I call home now. I started to think about flowers in a similar way; when you remove a flower from its natural environment and put it elsewhere, will it grow the same?"
In her art process, Gala integrates photographs in flowers. Through a process of cutting, clustering, and rearranging it within the painting, she essentially takes an object from its natural surroundings and puts it in a different one. In this way, she suggests a new identity to the object. Oelsner’s deep interest in the woman-flower analogy comes in part from her journey, and her choice to move to a new country and build her family there as a young woman. Her decision to move from Israel to the United States in the late 1990s, from one cultural and geographical environment to another, made her question the effect this would have on her identity and development, personally and professionally. She found in the world of flora an affinity with her decision to relocate and questioned whether she could grow, flourish and fulfill herself in her new surroundings, just as she would have in her original environment.
A mother of three, Oelsner has thought deeply about womanhood and motherhood, about the process of growing a new life inside her body, and the pressure she feels as a woman having to juggle her various roles as a spouse, mother, and artist. All these identities and responsibilities are present in her work.
Gala lives in New York and has an international exhibition profile, showing regularly in the USA and internationally. She studied painting and drawing at the Art Student League and the NY Academy of Art, Photography at ICP NY and she studied sculpture for seven years with the sculptor Janice Mauro. She also holds an MBA from NYIT in NY. In 2015 Galit participated in the residency program at the School of Visual Arts (SVA), NY.
