Oren Eliav

Oren Eliav was born in Israel in 1975 and lives and works in Tel Aviv.  

Exploring art history imagery and optical phenomena through painting, Eliav exposes the complex relationship between seeing and believing (or assuming). By employing various visual manipulations such as reflections, shifts in scale, breaks in composition, mirror images, repetition, installations with multiple perspectives, and more, his works present themselves as a mirage-like territory where cultural knowledge and the act of seeing compete for space in the viewer’s mind. As such, these works manage to encompass both illusion and understanding.  

Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at the Givon Art Gallery (2004, 2006, Tel Aviv), the Ashdod Museum of Art (2010, Ashdod), the Braverman Gallery (2010, 2012, Tel Aviv), the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2011, Tel Aviv), the Suzanne Tarasieve Gallery (2016, Paris), the Israel Museum (2018, Jerusalem) and the BUILDING Gallery (2020, Milan).  

Eliav has participated in group exhibitions held at numerous venues all over the world, including the Genia Schreiber University Art Gallery (2007, Tel Aviv), the Hanina Contemporary Art Gallery (2008, Tel Aviv), the Bat Yam Museum of Art (2008, Bat Yam), the MFA Graduate Show at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design (2009, Tel Aviv), the Mishkan Museum of Art (2009, Ein Harod), the Braverman Gallery (2009, 2015, 2016, Tel Aviv), the Glasgow School of Art (2009, Glasgow), the Haifa Museum of Art (2009, 2015, Haifa), the Liverpool Biennial (2010, Liverpool), the Leipzig International Art Programme (2014, Leipzig), the Fondazione Giorgio Cini (2015, Venice), the Pratt Institute (2016, Brooklyn), the Petach Tikva Museum of Art (2016, Petach Tikva), and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2017, Tel Aviv).

Eliav received the America-Israel Cultural Foundation Creative Excellence Grant (2004), the Young Artist Prize from the Ministry of Culture and Sports (2008), the Encouragement Award from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design (2008), the Tel Aviv Museum of Art’s Rappaport Prize for a Young Israeli Artist (2010), and the Ministry of Culture and Sports Prize for Art and Design (2017). He has participated in residencies at Cité Internationale des Arts (2013, Paris), the Schir – Art Concepts Residency@Berlin (2013, Berlin), and the Leipzig International Arts Program (2014, Leipzig). 

His works can be found in numerous public collections, including the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv; the Nicole Julien Mattei Collection, Paris; the Ekard Collection, Wassenaar; the C-Collection, Liechtenstein; the Gérard Depardieu Collection, Paris; the Tony Podesta Collection, Washington, DC;  the Israeli Discount Bank Collection; the Doron Sebbag Art Collection, ORS Ltd, Tel Aviv; the Art Partners Collection; the Art Vantage PCC Limited Collection, Gibraltar; the Tiroche DeLeon Collection; and private collections such as the collection of Peggy Scott and David Teplitzky, the Dubi Shiloah Collection, the Brandes Collection, the Jaglom Family Collection, the Hagit and Ofer Shapira Collection, the Dubi Shiff Art Collection, the collection of Nili Lipman and Sara Szold, the collection of Oli Alter, the Shemer Family Collection, and various other private collections in Israel and abroad.

Eliav earned his BFA (2005) and MFA (2009) from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem.