Gilad Efrat

Gilad Efrat (; born 1969) is a contemporary Israeli painter and a professor at the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, Israel.

Biography Gilad Efrat was born in 1969 in Beersheba, Israel. In 1997 he presented his first solo exhibition in Hakibutz Gallery for Israeli art in Tel Aviv and has since participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions at museums and galleries around the world, including in Austria, Italy, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany, Denmark, Texas, New York City, Scotland, and Philadelphia.

in 2003 he completed his MFA in the joint program of Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2004, he participated in the Core Residency program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, which included a two-year residency and a creative practice scholarship.

Since 2008, Efrat has been a senior lecturer at the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design in Ramat-Gan, in the Multidisciplinary Art Department. In 2018 he received a professorship by the Council for Higher Education. He previously taught also at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and in the Department of Art at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design.

His works Efrat's works deal mainly with questions of the language of painting and the representation of landscape as a geopolitical space through which identity and consciousness are constituted. The painting method he developed is based on covering the canvas with layers of paint, and then exposing the image by erasing the paint.

His works alternate between the "figurative" and the "abstract" and between landscapes and portraits. They present pictorial conceptions of the history of time and memory, in images which include archaeological sites, ruins of European cities, arid spaces of his hometown of Beersheba, the deserts of Mars and lunar valleys. His works also include self-portraits and portraits of apes. With his unique painting technique, the canvas turns into a kind of archaeological mound of layers of testimonies and erasures, documenting personal biography and local histories.

Efrat went on to paint landscapes of ruined cities, swamps, Tamarix trees and landscapes of the moon and Mars.

During the time he lived in Texas he began painting apes at the Houston Zoo. As part of a fundraising campaign for the zoo, those apes were given drawing tools and painted abstract paintings, intended for sale at auction. Inspired by their act, Efrat began to abandon the painting based on the visible reality, and turned to the abstract painting and to the preoccupation with color, stain, line and the internal relations within the painting. He created detailed portraits of the monkeys that caused the turning point in his work. These portraits mark a significant moment in Efrat's transition to abstraction. They address the tension between the figurative and the abstract, and the cerebral and the intuitive.The portraits were displayed at the Israel Museum in 2019 as well as at the "Monkey View" exhibition at the Ein Harod Arts Center in 2010.

Selected solo exhibitions 2019 – Gilad Efrat: Inside Painting, the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; (curator: Amitai Mendelsohn) (cat.) 2017 – Resurface, Inman Gallery, Huston, Texas 2016 – Gilad Efrat: Paintings, 2014–2016, The Michel Kikoïne Prize, Genia Schreiber University Gallery, Tel Aviv University (curator: Irit Tal) (cat.) Thinking Path, Loushy Art & Projects, Tel Aviv 2015 – Sandwalk, Inman Gallery, Houston, Texas 2012 – Negev, Inman Gallery, Houston, Texas 2014 – Recent Works, (two person exhibition with Michael Jones McKean), Special Projects, Untitled Art Fair, Miami 2010 – Ape Scape, Museum of Art, Ein Harod, Israel (curator: Galia Bar Or) (cat.) 2008 – Common Place, Oredaria Gallery of Contemporary Art, Rome Common Space, Inman Gallery, Houston, Texas 2006 – New Paintings, Inman Gallery, Houston, Texas 2004 – No Man's Land, Oredaria Gallery of Contemporary Art, Rome, Italy (cat.) Archeological Site, St. Augustine Church, Erfurt, Germany (curator: Rudolf Grass) Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv 2002 – New Paintings, Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv Portraits, Oranim Institute Gallery, Israel (curators: David Wakstein and students) 2001 – City 2001, (two person exhibition with Etti Abergel), Nachshon Gallery Kibutz Nachshon, Israel (curator: Yael Kainy) 2000 – New Paintings, Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv 1998 – Surface, Herzliya Museum of Art, Herzliya, Israel (curator: Dalia Levin) (cat.) The Reminiscence of the Desirable, North Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark (brochure) 1997 – History and Destruction In the Landscape of Israel, Hakibbutz Gallery, Tel Aviv (curator: Tali Tamir) 1996 – Studios in the Shelter, Shelter gallery space, Jerusalem 1995 – Installation-Morasha-Musrara, The Morasha Art Center Gallery, Jerusalem (curator: Alex Kremer)