Gideon Rubin
Photo: Richard Ivey
Gideon Rubin’s enigmatic paintings explore identity, history, and the inheritance of trauma through faceless yet evocative figures. Drawing on various sources including cinema, pop-culture periodicals and art history, Rubin investigates mythologies of the recent past. His expressive mark-making, muted palette, and use of negative space evoke a quiet intimacy, while the absence of facial features shifts focus to clothing, gestures, and surroundings, allowing viewers to project personal memories onto his subjects. By erasing details, he reveals new identities, creating mental and psychic portraits that invite reflection.
Gideon Rubin (b. 1973, Tel Aviv, Israel; lives and works in London, UK) received BFA from School of Visual Arts, New York (1999) and his MFA from Slade School of Fine Art (2002).
He has had numerous international group and solo exhibitions; most notably: ‘Moon Above Water’, Galerie Karsten Greve, Paris (2024); ‘Living Memory: Louise Bourgeois, Nicolas Godin & Gideon Rubin', curated by Beth Greenacre at All Saint's Chapel, London (2023); 'A Summer’s Tale' curated by Cici Xiang, at K11 Art Foundation, Shanghai (2022); ‘Black Book’, curated by James Putman, was held at the Freud Museum, London in 2018.
His works are held public collections including: Museum Voorlinden (The Netherlands), Collezione Maramotti (Italy), The Collezione Fondazione San Patrignano (Italy), Park Seobo Foundation (South Korea) and Herzliya Museum for Contemporary Art (Israel) and Kunsthalle Bremen (Germany).
In 2023, his second major monograph, Look Again, was published by Anomie Publishing with accompanying texts by Jennifer Higgie, Dr. Matthew Holman and Varda Caivano. Rubin is represented by Galerie Karsten Greve, Paris, Cologne, St Moritz; Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco; Fox Jensen Gallery, Sydney, Auckland; Monica de Cardenas Gallery, Milan; Alon Segev, Tel Aviv.
