born in Israel, 1978
lives and works in New York


Reuven Israel executes an opposite process to that of Duchamp: In meticulous and time-consuming handiwork, he creates objects that pose as readymade. Israel's sculptures are made of MDF and are painted with car paint. Dandy and shiny, they are pretending to be wonderfully engineered industrial products, untouched by human hands. This process turns out to be even more deceptive once the viewer realizes that the sculptures are not identifiable objects. Each of the objects reminds the viewer of another everyday object (a music box, a chest of drawers, a device for liquid soap), but is also different from it. Thus, colorful, seductive and desired, the sculptures leave the viewer in a space between the enigmatic and the deciphered, and with the troubling sense that he/she has always known the object, but still cannot call it by name.

As in the case of Duchamp, who presented the title as an organic part of the work, the names Israel chooses for his works function as an additional element of them. Almost familiar but confusing, usually in abbreviation, the names do not explain the work. On the contrary, they add an addition layer "like an invisible color," as Duchamp said, aimed at making the viewing experience more profound and challenging.