Gil Marco Shani (; born 1968) is an Israeli

painter Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

installation artist Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often cal ...

and educator, who lives and works in

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...

Biography

Gil Marco Shani was born in 1968 to Aaron and Leah Shani and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel. He graduated from the

Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design () is a public college of design and art located in Jerusalem. Established in 1906 by Jewish painter and sculptor Boris Schatz, Bezalel is Israel's oldest institution of higher education and is considered the ...

, Jerusalem, Bachelor of Arts (1994), studied Art Studies at the

Slade School The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

, London (1994) and Shoe Design at Afpic Vocational Training School, Paris (1998). Gil Marco Shani is a painter and installation artist. He has received numerous awards including the Gottesdiener Art Prize for Young Artists 2008 and the

Sandberg Prize The Sandberg Prize for Israeli Art refers to a prize for art and design awarded at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, with a particular focus on Israeli art. The prize was inaugurated in 1968 with funds from an anonymous New York City, New York–based ...

for Israeli Art 2018. His paintings are part of the permanent collections of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and the Israel Museum of Art. In 1994 he exhibited in ''Transit'' as part of ''Art Focus'' and in 1997 he participated in ''Decorative Attendants'', which merged human presence with exhibition objects as part of ''Threshold'' in the ''Young Artists Exhibitions'' series held at the

Israel Museum The Israel Museum (, ''Muze'on Yisrael'', ) is an Art museum, art and archaeology museum in Jerusalem. It was established in 1965 as Israel's largest and foremost cultural institution, and one of the world's leading Encyclopedic museum, encyclopa ...

, curated by Sarit Shapira. This series, dedicated to installation art, was a milestone in the development of installation art in Israel in the 1990s. In 1999, Shani's solo exhibition ''Friendship'' was held at the Dvir Gallery. In 2001 Shani built ''Safari'', an installation, as part of ''Helena'' (with

Avner Ben-Gal Avner Ben-Gal (Hebrew: אבנר בן-גל; August 26, 1966 – May 9, 2024) was an Israeli international painter and artist, working mainly from Tel Aviv, Israel. His works depict various intense, often neglected locations such as agricultural fiel ...

and Ohad Meromi), an exhibit at the Helena Rubinstein Contemporary Art Pavilion, the

Tel Aviv Museum of Art The Tel Aviv Museum of Art ( ''Muzeon Tel Aviv Leomanut'') is an art museum in Tel Aviv, Israel. The museum is dedicated to the preservation and display of modern and contemporary art both from Israel and around the world. History The Tel Aviv ...

. This exhibit was seminal in formulating contemporary trends in the Israeli installation art. From the Sandberg Prize for Israeli Art committee: ['His paintings feature a schematic outline on a uniform background, and they mark events, many of which bubble under the surface of polite culture. Shani's superb installations are challenging architectural interventions implanted in the heart of the museum and examine the basic assumptions of the museum experience in all its aspects. The spaces he created, such as: motel rooms, tropical forest, nightly stairway or enclosed bus depot, are surprising environments, charged and rich in details. Shani succeeds in surprising visitors each time in an artificial environment, full of beauty that is enveloped by a petrifying silence and feelings of threat and anxiety. The ambitious installation "Busses," which is currently on display at the Israel Museum, is one of the highlights of his work and a major achievement in Shani's consistent body of work.' Shani is a faculty member and senior lecturer at the Art Department, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. In 2018, his son Lev was born in

, co-parented with Renan Mosinson.

Exhibitions

Selected solo exhibitions

*2018
'Buses'
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Curated by Aya Miron (catalogue)

Prizes and grants

*1994: Mary Fisher Prize, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design *1999: The Young Artist Award, Israel’s Ministry of Science, Culture and Sports *2001: Dizengoff Prize for Painting and Sculpture, Tel Aviv–Yafo municipality *2003: Beatrice Kolliner Prize for a Young Israeli Artist, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem *2004: America–Israel Cultural Foundation scholarship *2005: The Shmuel Givon Prize, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv *2008: Nathan Gottesdiener Foundation Israeli Art Prize, Tel Aviv Museum of Art *2017: Outset Israel grant — National Lottery Council for the Arts grant for publishing an artist’s book *2018: Sandberg Prize for Israeli Art 2018

Artist books and catalogs

*2000: "Friendship", Dvir Gallery *2001: Safari / Safari, Tel Aviv Museum *2001: Bird Watching School / Birding School, Tel Aviv Museum *2007 Dome Gil Marco Shani, Revolver Press *2018: Buses, Israel Museum
English Buses CatalogBuses Hebrew Catalog

Gallery

File:Studio View, Tel Aviv, 2016.jpg, Studio View, TLV, 2016 File:Studio View, Berlin 2017.jpg, Studio View, Berlin, 2017 File:Mirror, Squares with Circle, Oil on Canvas.jpg, Mirror, Squares and Circle, Oil on Canvas File:Kitchen 2.jpg, Kitchen 2, Oil on canvas, 230 cm X 300 cm File:Studio View Berlin 2017.jpg, Studio View, Berlin, 2017 File:Studio View, Berlin, Grove Oil on Canvas.jpg, Studio View, Berlin, Grove Oil on Canvas File:Studio View, Berlin, Stairwell and Kitchen.jpg, Studio View, Berlin, Stairwell and Kitchen File:Studio View, Berlin, Staircase 2 and Kitchen 2.jpg, Studio View, Berlin, Stairwell 2 and Kitchen 2 File:Self Portrait, Berlin, 2017.jpg, Self Portrait, Berlin, 2017 File:Self Portrait 2, Berlin, 2017.jpg, Self Portrait 2, Berlin, 2017

References

Primary

Secondary

External links

*
Gil Marco Shani Drawings 2012-2018There Is Life in the Artificial Sarah Breitberg-Semel in Conversation with Gil Marco Shani
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shani, Gil Marco Gay painters Academic staff of Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design 1968 births Living people Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design alumni Israeli gay artists Israeli LGBTQ painters 21st-century Israeli painters Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art Artists from Tel Aviv Gay Jews