Born: 1971 Tel Aviv, Israel
Year of Migration to the UK: 2001
Biography
Painter Guy Shoham was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1971. Shoham began studying art at the age of twelve and later credited a childhood encounter with drawings by Egon Schiele at the Tel Aviv Museum, together with a Rijksmuseum exhibition of James Ensor's work seen on a family holiday, as formative influences on his decision to become a painter. He undertook his undergraduate training at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem from 1992 to 1996, where the curriculum's emphasis on conceptual art encouraged him to question and stretch the boundaries of his thinking. Seeking to develop his technical grounding, he subsequently attended the Jerusalem Studio School between 1997 and 1999, studying under the painter Israel Hershberg and acquiring what he later described as observational skills and a disciplined studio routine. In 1998 he also completed a summer programme at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, USA. In 2001 Shoham immigrated to England to undertake postgraduate studies at Chelsea College of Art and Design in London, graduating with an MA in Fine Art with distinction in 2002; the following year he was awarded a scholarship to attend the Drawing Year at the Prince's Drawing School, London (now the Royal Drawing School), and between 2003 and 2004 he also held a residency at Richmond Adult Community College in London.
Shoham works exclusively in oil, generally on canvas or linen, valuing the medium for what he has called its flexibility and playfulness. His large-scale paintings draw on childhood memories of his family's timber yard, and planks, off-cuts and wood laminates recur throughout his work as both formal and symbolic building blocks. Combining the conceptual training he received at Bezalel with the observational discipline learned under Hershberg, Shoham's practice sits at the intersection of abstraction and realism. He repeatedly returns to the tension between high and low art, kitsch and modernism, and authenticity and fakery. His 2018 series I Was (Not), painted in oil on linen, took its title from a moment when the artist, waking without his glasses, briefly failed to recognise one of his own paintings; the resulting compositions use stripes, recalling the work of Paul Klee, to suggest landscapes glimpsed through collapsing architectural structures. Shoham's dual identity as an Israeli-born painter who has lived in London since his twenties informs this recurring interest in instability and transformation, with objects and images that are elevated, discarded or rendered ambiguous between one state and another.
Shoham has held a number of solo exhibitions including Little China at the Artists' Association, Tel Aviv, in 2005, Schmuklerman at Dollinger Art Project, Tel Aviv, in 2008, Evanesced at Shed and a Half Gallery, London, in 2009, and Black Water at Artcore Gallery, Vienna, in 2012. More recently he has shown "The Anguish of the Earth Absolve Our Eyes" at RuptureXIBIT, London, in 2022, Post - at the same gallery in 2024, and In the Beginning, a Stone Was Created at Keren Bar-Gil Contemporary Art, Israel, in 2025. His work has also featured in numerous group exhibitions, among them Four at the Hamomhe at Hamomhe alternative space, Tel Aviv, in 1999, Flowlock at Century Gallery, London, in 2002, Picture Room at Gasworks Gallery, London, in 2003, curated by Polish artist, Goshka Macuga, A Rich Seam at the Petach Tikva Museum, Israel in 2006, Longing, part of Office Session III, London, in 2015, curated by Caitlin Mavroleon, and Paper Scissor Stone, shown at the Haifa Museum and the Ben David Museum, Kibbutz Bar-Am, Israel in 2017 and 2019. In 2019 Shoham published the artist's book Painting Machine: Guy Shoham, which brought together some 80 works from eight painting series, alongside four commissioned texts examining his practice from theoretical, art-historical, biographical and fictional perspectives.
Shoham lives and works in London, where has maintains a studio in Brixton. His workis not represented in the UK public domain.
Michal Mel
Related books
- Guy Shoham, editor, Ariella Yedgar, with texts by Eran Bar-Gil, Paul Clinton, Angela Kingston and Harry Seymour, Painting Machine: Guy Shoham (London: self-published, 2019)
- Guy Shoham and Caitlin Mavroleon, Installations (London: self-published, 2015)
- Orly Hoffman editor, Guy Shoham: Little China (Tel Aviv: Painters and Sculptors Association - Tel Aviv, 2005)
- 'Flowlock', Jewish Chronicle, 30 August 2002, p. 51
- Eitan Ben-Moshe, Zohar Cohen, Sami Buchari and Guy Shoham, 4 ba-Mumḥeh (Tel Aviv: Mumḥeh Alternative Exhibition Space, 1999) [Hebrew]
Related organisations
- Chelsea College of Art and Design, London (student)
- Richmond Adult College, London, England (artist in residence; director)
- Royal Drawing School (student)
Related web links
- Guy Shoham, artist's website
- Information Center for Israeli Art, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
- Rise Art
- Royal Drawing School
- Saatchi
Selected exhibitions
- In the beginning, a stone was created, Keren Bar Gil Contemporary Art, Israel (2025)
- Post -, RuptureXibit, London (2024)
- The anguish of the earth absolve our eyes, RuptureXibit, London (2022)
- Paper Scissor Stone, Haifa Museum and Ben David Museum, Kibbutz Bar-Am, Israel (2017-19)
- Longing, Office Session III, London (2015)
- Black Water, Artcore Gallery, Vienna, Austria (2012)
- Evanesced, Shed and a Half Gallery, London (2009)
- Schmuklerman, Dollinger Art Project, Tel Aviv, Israel (2008)
- A Rich Seam, Petach Tikva Museum, Israel (2006)
- Little China, The Artists' Association, Tel Aviv, Israel (2005)
- Picture Room, Gasworks Gallery, London (2003)
- Flowlock, Century Gallery, London (2002)
- Four at the Hamomhe, Hamomhe alternative space, Tel Aviv, Israel (1999)
