Reuven Israel b. 1978

Reuven Israel’s sculptural practice directly engages with form and color, drawing from myriad cultural references that range from religious monuments to science fiction. These sources amalgamate into autonomous abstract sculptures that simultaneously feel familiar—due to the employment of a rich range of signifiers—yet unhinged to any particular context.

While they appear to be industrially fabricated, the sculptures are actually the result of a painstaking process that involves hand-cutting, gluing, laminating, and sanding medium density fibreboard (MDF) that is then coated with industrial paints and lacquers. The resulting sculptures play a game of visual deception as the handmade simulates that which is industrially fabricated: Wood disguises itself as metal and plastic, and sculpture takes the form of a seemingly utilitarian object.

Reuven Israel (b. 1978, Jerusalem, Israel) received his MFA and BFA from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem. He has had solo exhibitions at Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Center for Contemporary Art—Tel Aviv; Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles;  Braverman Gallery, Tel-Aviv; Fridman Gallery, New York; and Museo Civico Floriano Bodini, Gemonio, Italy, among others. Selected group exhibitions include The Museum Imagined at Danese Corey, New York; The Museum Presents Itself 2 at Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Domestic Ideals at Lesley Heller Workspace, New York; The Readymade Centennial at Haifa Museum of Art; Re: Visiting Rockefeller at the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum, Jerusalem; and Senses of the Mediterranean at Hangar Bicocca, Milan. Reuven has received several awards, including the Israeli Ministry of Culture’s Young Artist Award, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art’s Legacy Heritage Fund Prize, and the America-Israel Cultural Foundation Scholarship. In April 2016, the artist completed a permanent public installation at Setter Square, Tel Aviv.