Not Everything Is Rosy

Who is Yosi Lubalsky within the realm of painting? Is he his father's child, or his own child's father? This recurring question forms the starting point of Not Everything Is Rosy, a creative and personal journey unfolding over eighteen years. What began as an exploration of fatherhood from the perspective of a father was interrupted by life itself, lay dormant for years, and has now been revived to reach a quiet and reconciled conclusion. The exhibition's title carries a dual meaning. It reflects Lubalsky's dramatic artistic decision to abandon the rich, warm palette long associated with his work in favor of a restrained spectrum of blues. At the same time, it expresses a direct confrontation with life's complexities, loss, and exposed emotions. The sea functions as both a visual and emotional metaphor, an ocean of memories and enduring longing that deepens the relationship between son and father, and father and son. It is not merely a backdrop, but an active presence that envelops the figures, connects them, and gives each moment a sense of tranquility, compassion, and intimacy. Alongside the large-scale oil paintings, the exhibition includes preparatory charcoal drawings that reveal the artist's earliest lines of thought and the emotional and structural foundations upon which the finished works are built. The father-son relationship also acquires symbolic meaning through the paintings' colors. Ochre yellow, cobalt blue, and white create a space suspended between earth and sky, human warmth and infinity, matter and spirit. Ochre evokes memory, rootedness, and warmth; cobalt blue opens the gaze toward the depths of both sea and soul; white introduces light, breath, and stillness. Together, they carry much of the emotional weight of the work. At the heart of the exhibition lies the transformation Lubalsky himself underwent during the intervening years. Life continued, bringing the loss of both parents. Through this bereavement, he discovered that orphanhood is not defined by age. The artist who began the series nearly two decades ago as a father observing his son now completes it as the child within the paintings, an orphaned son searching for his parents. In the exhibition's central large-scale painting, Lubalsky seeks to reconnect with his mother through the act of knitting. The image becomes a metaphor for life itself: a person quietly knits together the sweater of a lifetime, weaving memories and experiences into its fabric, while knowing that unraveling is ultimately inevitable. Not Everything Is Rosy is a moment of wholeness and acceptance, an invitation to contemplate the threads of family life as they unravel and are woven anew within a vast blue ocean of parting and consolation.

Curator: Ilana Carmeli Lanner