Eliav’s oeuvre is multi-faceted and multi-layered but nonetheless, at it's core stands a deep commitment to the medium of painting, including the historical weight and the possibilities it holds in regard to contemporary art and thought. In the last years Oren Eliav has been charting an original and unique path in Israeli Art. His work represents a fundamental shift in the story of Israeli painting and is characterized by an unfamiliar visual richness and virtuous technical skill which offer layered visions and numerous subtle observations. Oren Eliav’s paintings areconcerned with the mental and physiological relationships between viewer and painting. 
These paintings encompass both the illusion and the disillusionment and, as such, they create a sustained and complex viewing experience, both challenging and gripping. The works present themselves as a mirage-like territory where cultural knowledge and the physical act of seeing compete for a place in the viewer’s mind. In Eliav’s work, the painterly process gives itself over to excess and pathos. The rich and variegated surface both conceals and reveals the exaggerated, senseless dimension lying in the images on which the paintings are based. One brushstroke joins another as they accumulate in front of the viewer, forming a presence in the process of becoming. The suggestive viewing process through which paint is transformed into smoke, vapor or light is also a process of awakening, which activates the images in a continuous present. In this manner, the images and the painterly craft partake of a realm in which lavishness and extravagance coexist. 

His recent works go beyond the discerned image. They are very different from his previous works but, at the same time, continue them by extending the act of looking even more and challenge the beholder in new ways. These works add up to Eliav's unique path, voice and position in the Israeli art world and in contemporary painting.  They constitute an important development in Eliav's oeuvre, who is one of the central, important and bright artists working in Israel today.