Artist Roy Nachum’s ( 1979) exhibition “Blind” is being exhibited at Openhouse Gallery so check out his artwork that incorporates Braille encouraging viewers to not only see but to also touch the works of art.

Nachum has always felt frustrated that when visiting a museum or gallery, no one can touch the art and during one in particular he took notice of the Braille signposts on the staircases and bathrooms. He asked himself why there was Braille signage if a blind person can’t see or touch the art?  So he researched how a visually impaired person experiences art and decided to create a series of paintings that would communicate emotion, imagination, and the relationship between text and image. Oh and if the work looks kind of familiar many of you New Yorkers have probably seen his paintings gracing the walls at 1Oak. The art has been collected by many prominent collectors, musicians and entertainers including Justin Timberlake and Leonardo DiCaprio.

The life-scaled oil paintings are surrealistic of a fantasy realm, where viewers witness these psychological turning points of the subjects’ lives. The characters are often caught between worlds: submergence/emergence, naiveté/maturity, wilderness/civilization. This duality is overlaid with a texture of raised “pixels” of paint that belie the photo realistic quality of his paintings. This playful mimicking of the digital printer’s thumbprint forces the viewer to “zoom in” leading to the realization that each of these near-perfect paint daubs has been individually crafted.

Apparently many people confuse his work with digital art. However, his works are actually oil paintings on canvas that are painted in a way that spurs the viewer to investigate further. Each ‘pixel’ is painted one-by-one. The end result is a painting that comes together in a unique manner.