Artist spotlight: Oren Eliav

21.12.2015

Since graduating Bezalel MFA program in 2009, Eliav remains one of our favourite artists in Israel. With 6 works currently in the collection, we are pleased to see his career taking off in Europe.

Oren Eliav, Detail of Untitled (2014), Oil on canvas, 120 x 200 cm.

Graduated from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem and Cooper Union School of Art, New York, Oren Eliav has emerged as one the most talented contemporary artists working in Israel.

In his recent solo exhibition at Suzanne Tarasieve Gallery in Paris (29 November 2015 - 9 January 2016), Eliav revisits early netherlandish altarpieces, as part of his ongoing fascination with devotional art. The altarpiece form reminds us that until not so long ago, looking at a painting was also an act of prayer. It is this complex relationship between seeing and believing that makes Oren's paintings so intriguing. The paintings create an optical uncertainty in the viewer, who struggles to reconcile his cultural knowledge of Christian imagery with Eliav's striking painterly language.

In his oeuvre, Eliav employs a wide range of manipulations such as reflections, shifts in scale, breaks in composition, mirror images and multiple perspectives, thus creating a complex viewing experience where illusion and disillusionment, belief and doubt are made to coexist.

The Tiroche DeLeon Collection has been following Oren since 2011 and now owns six of his paintings. Among them are 2 "Listener” works, that were exhibited at the Tel-Aviv Museum on the occasion of Eliav's exhibition as the winner of 2010 Rappaport Prize for a Young Painter. The power of these portraits lies in its multiple layers of meaning, reverberating old master works found in the museum while suggesting the unseen dimension of sound in the medium of painting.

Oren Eliav is represented by Braverman Gallery in Israel and Suzanne Tarasieve Gallery in Paris.

For Oren Eliav's bio, click hereTo watch an i24news interview with Eliav, click here. (French)