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Charmed by an imagined world somewhere between fine-drawn aesthetics and a geometric wonderland is where the works of artist Moshé Elimelech find their audience.

Whether falling subject to the whimsical spontaneity of his grid-like watercolors, or imagining the vast pictorial landscapes inherent in his modular Arrangements, Elimelech infuses each work with a sensibility of the visual world that surrounds him.

Elimelech creates clean, crisp compositions that succeed in depicting wonderment and expressing human sentiment in each of the three mediums he has found himself working: watercolors, groupings of sculptural cube paintings he calls Arrangements, and installation. Throughout his work, shapes and the placement of color produce a witty correlation, conveyed through an optical play of abstracted imagery and juxtaposition.

The use of simplified objects and a colorful palette, as with his cubed Arrangements, are means of facilitating ready visual comprehension of the interplay between logic and happenstance, which occurs between the artist and his work, in a manner that allows the observer to easily assimilate and decipher. “Geometrical composition was always a language I felt comfortable with,” comments Elimelech, “I understand how math immediately comes to mind when one sees or interacts with Arrangements. It is intriguing to think and imagine the enormous number of combinations, however, the numbers are not that important to me. I am more interested in how the forms and colors play against one another. That kind of play is also embedded in my watercolors.  I get inspiration from my surroundings. Often times a small, insignificant, detail in nature, be it part of a landscape, a reflection or the shadow of a leaf, will trigger an image in my mind.”

His watercolors, like the cubes, seem strategically organized, with intermittent interruption of chaotic elements.  Apparent in both the watercolors and his Arrangements is the duality of spontaneity vs. planned precision. Like a great jazz ensemble, Elimelech masterfully scales the confinements of a grid in both his cubes and the watercolors, while leaving a great deal of the final outcome to the observation and imagination of an audience. “I paint these abstracted landscapes in a way for people to admire and interpret openly, leaving them visual cues for the play of imagination.”

Art critic Ezrha Jean Black writes, “You feel the musicality – the lead-in on a chromatic note, the intensification. Flecks of color spark across registers, while another fades from one column to the next; and soft grays elide to charcoal and black – like a long sustained note. “ This juxtaposition creates an optic vibration in his watercolors, offsetting the constructive bars by the sense of visual surprise.

Elimelech's installations build a setting one can step into; an imagined landscapes of altered form and color. Like his Arrangements, the interjection of a third-party in observing and altering the artwork perpetuates its condition, meaning the piece never settles on a particular landscape or finite pictorial conclusion. This inherently becomes a major characteristic of the pieces themselves. Investigating the many combinations in moving components of the installation, or each cube Arrangement, enables a personal journey for the viewer to explore these curious visual landscapes, geometric configurations and vast optic alternatives. Beyond the physicality of simply changing the shapes and colors, these pieces are intelligently constructed in a way that does not leave engagement with the works devoid of human feeling. These pieces have a way of highlighting storytelling found suspended between the observed and imagined environments, much in the way a child would perceive. As art critic Constance Mallinson writes, “They elicit metaphors for a human existence full of pleasure, surprise, and the constant possibility of new meanings, with beautiful design the means to that engagement.”

Elimelech's neo-modernist sense of design and play elicit narrative for the smart observer, or those with a mind for architecture, music and mathematics. And in turn, his pieces are very engaging to the eye and encourage all to enjoy the imagined worlds he suggests.