Oren Eliav

Oren Eliav, Untitled, 2007 and Untitled, 2007. Photograph by Thierry Bal

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Oren Eliav (b.1975, Israel) is an Israeli painter whose work is still little known outside his home-country. His paintings are richly layered and insistently worked. In each canvas the pigments melt in a dense succession of sediments. Eliav maintains his paintings cannot be said accomplished until his characters (or metaphysical visions) ultimately come to life. Their immanent ability to nail down the viewer’s attention clearly manifests only after a long time of gestation. To make each image emerging from the bi-dimensional realm of the canvas is a time-consuming process: a cycle that positively ends only when these ghostly presences finally find a voice on their own. The artist’s fascination for disquieting beauty is evident in all his production. 

Oren Eliav is indeed interested in ornament and decoration (almost a taboo in contemporary art), but the phantoms he depicts are instead primarily committed to telling stories, almost notwithstanding the artist’s own intentions. The series of paintings selected for Touched showed the true colours of several public personas. Men – captured in embarrassing, at times demoniac, poses – populated his canvases unveiling the dark side of politics and the psychological viciousness that lay behind most public appearances.

Oren Eliav at Liverpool Biennial 2010

Untitled, 2007
Oil on canvas 100 x 300 cm 

Untitled, 2007
Oil on wood 70 x 30 cm

Exhibited at 52 Renshaw Street