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Growing up a second generation Jewish American in Detroit during the ’50s and ’60s, painter Aptekar’s focus as an artist is the direct result of living through the conflicts arising within communities in transition: midwestern Jews striving to assimilate, and African-Americans asserting their identity in revolt against the restrictions imposed upon them.
Aptekar takes sections of paintings by artists of the past, and appropriates all or parts of them to form the basis of his paintings. Bolted to the front of the paintings are glass panels that are etched with his own text. Paintings by familiar old masters appear with narratives about Aptekar’s conflicting artistic and ethnic identities. With this strategy, Aptekar encourages the audience to engage into a discussion.
The text is often autobiographical and sometimes so personal that one feels like a voyeur reading it. Of course we read it anyway, and the messages become a universal through our own identification. We each see or read ourselves, or someone we know, in the painting and through the written word. The viewer, reflected in the glass, becomes a participant in the dialogue. Much of the dialogue Aptekar is using currently deals with his splintered identity as a man, a secular Jew and a youngest son. Aptekar currently splits his time working between Paris and New York.