Art: Pixelgraphic by Orit Ben-Shitrit

To the point: Artist's paintings play with pixilation

By Erika Yowell

Once again, one of the city of Las Vegas' galleries has come through with an impressively high-quality exhibit by an out-of-town artist. This time, it's downtown's Reed Whipple Cultural Center gallery that houses the show of note, which consists mostly of pixilated oil and acrylic paintings by New York City-based artist Orit Ben-Shitrit. Nearly 20 of the artist's works are on view in the space and are, incidentally, available for sale at "significantly reduced" prices owing to the gallery's nonprofit designation.

Ben-Shitrit's works look much like computer-pixilated photographs, with the "A-ha!" factor lying in the fact that they are actually carefully plotted out and rendered paintings. The title of each painting gives the number of pixels involved, ranging from the relatively simple "You_are_here, 223 pix," depicting a bumblebee against a richly atmospheric violet background, to "Ouuuh doggey! 2270 pix," a pot-bellied, cherubic lad reminiscent of the Bob's Big Boy mascot. She is fond of employing these kinds of images from kitschy mid-century pop culture as her subject matter; figures reminiscent of early Barbie dolls and kewpie dolls appear. Painted on panels as large as 5 1/2 feet by 6 feet, the images themselves give the impression of having been blown up far beyond the size their resolution was intended to support, hence the pixilation.

These are highly hangable works, but the artist states that the paintings have more than just a decorative impetus, as they provide her with a forum to address certain contemporary social issues in a traditional art form. Titles such as "I_see_you_baby," showing a man ogling a primping woman through binoculars, suggest commentary on voyeurism. The themes of isolation and cyberporn are also presented. These two conditions are among those most frequently associated with the computerization of our society and are arguably, therefore, the ones most powerfully addressed by her painting technique.

Ben-Shitrit is a brilliant colorist; as a direct descendant of the Pointillists, she should be. She juxtaposes highly saturated versions of tertiary colors--blue-violet and yellow-green, for example--to vibrant effect. Each painted pixel is its own little meticulous canvas, and lends the appearance of having been fretted over until the artist was satisfied it was flawless.

A few of Ben-Shitrit's works are weaker than these large painted tableaux. Her series called "5 works on paper, blue, pink, green, purple, orange" would benefit from a little more of the TLC shown in the paintings. In some cases, the white space between the image itself and its frame is irregular to the point of looking unbalanced. Another stylistic departure is more successful, however. Her series of little latched lightboxes, while not as stunning as the large paintings, is well-executed and inviting.