Yishai Jusidman makes art that reexamines the nature of visual representation in contemporary culture yet is strongly tied to art historical traditions. In the early 1990s, he focused on images of clowns — a controversial subject, at best, in current art circles. He made two bodies of work featuring clowns: large scale canvases and suspended wooden orbs. The orbs were executed using the baroque device of anamorphosis in which the image is manipulated so that it may be optically read from only a single vantage point. In the paintings, individual clown’s faces are tightly cropped against neutral backgrounds — gazing poignantly at the viewer. Based on archival photographs of famous clowns, these works challenge the viewer and art historical conventions.

In a more recent body of work, Jusidman follows in the tradition of such important baroque artists as Diego Velázquez (1599–1660) and Caravaggio