Zehava Yaakovy, "The Voice of Jerusalem", 17.05.1983
...There is something dazzling in the light of his paintings. It's like looking directly at the sun... He takes from the distant Past as well as from the Present. But actually he belongs to no time... He is what I once have called a meta-time artist.
Gidon Efrat, ''The Voice of Jerusalem'', 21.05.1982
...Okun's multi-layered technique expresses truthfully the heavy weight of his themes. Contrary to the classical nude of Ingres, Rubens or Greek sculpture, Okun's nude is not perfected, smooth or inviting. It's destorted, scratched, damaged. In spite of Okun's claims to Renaissance influences (present in the postures and technique), the figures in his paintings remind of Lucien Freud or Francis Bacon. The bodies are stout, plump, material. The body as flesh and sanctuary of the secular... Okun is a real diamond.
Gilad Meltzer, ''Ediot Ahronot'', 24.09.99
...What is most fascinating and exciting about this painting is the sensation that behind this art stands a great and courageous man of philosophical and moral stature not seen here for a long time.
Albert Swissa, "Kol Ha'Ir", 03.04.1998
...Sasha Okun is the most interesting phenomenon in our artistic life. I could even say: one of its most amusing adventures.
...If Israel is destined to have a life of eternity, and I believe that with all my heart,-then, just as Market's landscapes, Degas's coffee houses and Cezann's fruits remain in the atmosphere of Paris, in the coming hundred years, Okun's ancient squares, open street markets and narrow sidestreets will continue to pervade the atmosphere of Israel...
Maya Kaganskaya, ''22'', Nb 48, 1986
...Okun is at the same time a poet and a visual alchemist, an artist whose strange admixtures are as much experiment as they are song. Mock heroic and humdrum, enthusiastic and laconic, superficial and supernatural, Okun's pictorial combinations have an immediate effect on the viewer, a grasping of one's interest.
...Besides possesing a flair for invention, syncopation of iconography and a secretive sense of Jewish historical perspective, Okun draws beautifully in a light classical manner and paints with a flair for the spirited brush gesture and veiled hue. His art belongs to no contemporary stream no convention anf groups do not gather round his peculiar style.
Gil Goldfine, "Jerusalem Post", 19.12.1986
...Combinations of concepts from Rauschenberg, Caravaggio and Eastern Orthodox icon painting confront one in a wall-size altar piece by Russian-trained Alexander Okun. Constracted like a revolving stage set on three levels, Okun implants realistically painted figures, collage materials, found objects and esoteric symbolic objects in a sweeping narrative. Behind it all there seems to be an interaction of saints and sinners, of the fortunate and unfortunate, of hope and despair. ...Okun's major pictorial thrust is a self contained, all-inclusive European ghetto, a vivid world full of the parables, fables and legends immortalized by the likes of Shalom Aleichem and Bashevis Singer. Llis "inside-outside". shtetl, although obscure in respect to many images,is manageable, compared to a second, enigmatic Baroque niche full of contorted figures, hazy gargoyles and several wooden planks fanning out in front of the painting. Marvellously conceived food paintings are also on view.
Gil Goldfine, "Jerusalem Post", 24.02.1989
...Okun, a virtuoso draftsman, is represented by 15 large paintings in oils on plywood. Each depicts a single image of a man, woman or child, placed centrally or to one side of his composition. In his best pieces, the background to these figures is neutral and amorphous, with dry application of paint giving the effect of a weathered mural.
As in the past, Okun adopts an anti-classical, grotesque approach to the human figure, opting for ugly, disturbing poses.Employing a yellowish flesh palette, he paints bodies sprawling on wrinkled sheets or crawling on all fours, their forms recalling the haunchers or carcasses of animals. Many of the people that Okun depicts appear to hover between life and death. His most terrifying panting is that of a baby with the body of a shrunken old man lying in a contorted position, a noxious fog seeping through the bars of his crib-cum-bier.
Okun's irreverent attitude to the human figure reaches a climax with his portrait of a man taking off his underpants. Is this image (and others) Okun's tongue-incheek response to classical depictions of women such as those of Ingres's bathhouse scene or Cezanne's Bathers ?
A personal favorite among this range of superb paintings is the picture entitled "Man Cleaning His Teeth" in which a nude figure, toothbrush in hand,is screaming in agony or ecstasy. A rewarding presentation.
Angela Levine, "Jerusalem Post", 20.08.1991
...Alexander Okun has gained a fine reputation for charmingly eccentric pseudo-altarpieces containing small objects, human figures and animals. The sources he calls up are amazingly diverse, ranging from Flemish and Baroque painting, Russian icons, early Picasso figures and characters plucked from Jerusalem's Mahaneh Yehuda market. His latest piece in the same vein, nine meters high, made from papes, plastic and painted wood, is the jewel in the crown of his new sprawling installation, "The Gate of Settlement", a work which takes a satirical look at the materialistic and venal concerns of contemporary society. Okun's relief is based on the facade of a Gothic cathedral, but its traditional rose window is replaced by a circular table set out for a meal (symbol of gluttony?), while the niches usually reserved for sculptures of saints and martyrs are occupied by 17 gods of Okun's devising; among them, the God of Government depicted as a beast of prey; and the God of the People as an edifice made from kebab skewers, newspapers and cassettes.
Angela Levine, "Jerusalem Post", 05.08.1994
...Okun presents a serious of portraits which might have been based on specific characters, but they become archetypal: Woman, Man, Baby. His paintngs are of single figures,always tortured and scorned at by his merciless brush. At the closing of a century that brought to life the most horrific representations of the human body (from Picasso, through Francis Bacon and up to Mattew Barney) one can hardly call Okun a radical, but he certainly manages to instill in the viewer a sense of discomfort. This discomfort is a result of double meaning.On the one hand, Okun lays his figures on a background reminiscent of a dry and slightly crumbling mural, the kind of setting that winks at the viewer,promising him an encounter with a familiar and secure past (in some of his paintings thre is an absolutely conscious reference, or so it seems, to Renaissance painters like Mantegna; such a painting is "Andy M.," which relates to Mantegna's "Lying Jesus" though, Okun's images themselves are almost as pathetic as Hanoch Levin's characters: large droopy figures, caught inside their own flesh, both aware and in denial of their screaming ugliness. And since clearly unflattering depictions of male figures are quite scarce these days,Okun's male portraits turn out to be very conspicuous. "Man Taking Off Underpants" or "Man Lying" are bitter and penetrating portraits.
Setting his work against Lucian Freud's male nudes (especially his nude series from the late Eighties and early Nineties), emphasizes just how much Okun dwarfs and ridicules his large figures, which come through as pathetically and clumsily naked.
In the work of an artist we can witness a game of estrangement from and attraction to the local art scene. Okun has been working here for over 20 years now, and his paining is very different from what we generally see in Israel.However, his affinity to Yosef Hirsh (one of the older and more respected Israeli artists), especially in terms of drawing, is obvious.
...This exhibition gives us a good opportunity to explore artistic enterprises which are for the most part interesting, especially the paintings of Okun, which should be taken as one further engaging facet of the figurative revival in Israeli painting.
Smadar Sheffi, "Ha'Aretz", August 27, 1999
...Sasha Okun, the beneficiary of a sound academic training in his birthplace, is a master draftsman as well as a painter muralist and sometime message artist and satirist. His virtuoso larger-than-life graphite drawings of babies now on view verge on the grotesque, for these tots appear to turn into old men before our eyes. This is not just a case of cute newborns resembling Winston Churchill. It appears to be a reminder that no sooner are we born to life than we are surrounded by death, or the decay that leads to it.
Whatever the case, Okun's drawings are complete works of art, superbly composed and lit in chairascuro, with the tonal effects on the body and in the background making a satisfying play of lights and darks that suggests depth while also remaining on the picture plane. Okun draws partially in tone, employing a fine pencil to accent a few contours and details, all with commendable restraint.
M. Ronen, "Jerusalem Post", 11.04.1998
..."Out Of The Frame" is the first of two group shows at this venue in which the paintings are not unframed or off the wall, but simply out of context with each other, unconnected in style, form and approach. It's worth going to see this first effort just to view four large and marvellous pencil drawings by Russian trained Alexander Okun. They are startling in both image and technique: one of a huge, antlike insect is a "tour de force" . The other three, a fox with the face of a Tasmanian Devil; a cat; and a dove, are all remarkable, the handling of the latter is particularly notable.
M. Ronen, "The Jerusalem Post Entertariment Magazine", 12.01.1990
...The highlight of this show and enjecting some humor, is Alexander Okun's delightful baroque altarpiece, a paean to Jerusalem's Mahaneh Yehuda market made some time ago, which is accompanied by pastel drawings of remarkable quality.
Angela Levine, "Jerusalem Post", 05.02.1993
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