Oren Eliav was born in Israel in 1975. He studied at the Cooper Union School of Art, New York, 2003 and was awarded a BFA with honors from the Department of Art, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem 2004, as well as an MFA from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and design, Tel Aviv, 2009. Oren Eliav’s paintings are concerned with the mental and physical relationships between viewer and painting. By employing various visual manipulations such as reflections, shifts in scale, breaks in composition, mirror images, multiple perspectives and so on, his 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 and as such they are able to encompass both illusion and disillusionment. While examining religious imagery and optical phenomena in the medium of painting, Eliav continually exposes the complex relations between seeing and believing.
His Solo exhibitions include, Infant, Suzanne Tarasieve Gallery, Paris, 2015; “Call and Response”, Braverman Gallery, Tel Aviv, 2013; Two Thousand and Eleven, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2011; They’ll Never wake us in Time, Braverman Gallery, Tel Aviv, 2010; Saddle, Ashdod museum of Art, 2010; and Visitors, Givon gallery, Tel Aviv, 2006.
Selected group exhibitions include, The Human Stain, Liverpool Biennial, 2010; Wild Exaggeration, Haifa Museum of Art, 2009, among others.
Eliav is also the recipient of the Rappaport Prize for a Young Israeli painter, 2010, Young Artist Prize, Israeli Ministry of Education and Culture, 2008; The excellence award, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, 2008; and the America- Israel Foundation Prize, 2004. He has attended the LIAP residency in Leipzig, 2015, Cité Internationale des Arts residency, Paris, 2013 and the Schir residency in Berlin, 2013.
Oren Eliav’s work is featured in museum collections as well as public and private collections in Israel and abroad.
