BIOGRAPHY

Israel Abou, born in 1974 is a French artist based in Tel-Aviv. He grew up with his twin brother in the greenery of the forest of Fontainebleau. Between Jewishness and nature, the permanent presence of his double led him to question the world from a very early age.

1998: He opened his visual creation studio, MUM, in Paris. With his first camera, he began to explore the art of photography. He focused on portraiture, following for three years the urban wanderings of a Japanese woman living in Paris.

2004: He continued his analog experiments around a new model that he photographed for eight years, before trying his hand at landscape photography. He made a photographic trip to the island of Lampedusa in Italy. This work constituted his first exhibition, at the gallery of the artist Mathias Kiss in the Marais, in Paris in 2006: Piazza dello amore perfetto.

2009: He discovered the island of Gotland in Sweden, which inspired Areyouthere, his first project. Israel Abou continued his initiatory journeys between the Baltic Sea, the least salty in the world and the Dead Sea, the saltiest, until 2014, when he completed this project.

2010: National School of Decorative Arts. He presented his first works to Paola Bjaringer, gallerist and collector of Swedish origin, and they exhibited together at Art Paris Art Fair and Paris Design Week alongside designers Matalie Crasset and Arik Lévy.

This is where the artist Marie-Ange Guilleminot, who was the partner of the artist Absalon, discovered “the hands and movements” of Israel Abou. She suggested that he conduct a performative intervention in an exhibition dismantling film at the Museum of Ceramics in Sèvres. This is the beginning of a friendship, at the origin, ten years later, of his meeting with Yona Fischer.

2013: He moved to Tel Aviv.

2015: Israel Abou participated in a major collective exhibition at the Royal Monastery of Brou bringing together more than a hundred artists including Marina Abramovic, Louise Bourgeois, Nan Goldin... His film Kinah was selected by the curator of the exhibition, Marie Deparis-Yafil.

2016: His new project, Jetesais, was initiated during an artist residency at the Arctic Circle on the Lofoten Islands in Norway. Invited the following year to teach yoga for a fortnight in Tokyo, Israel Abou obtained a second residency on the island of Yakushima in Japan. He completed his journey and this second project in 2020 in the Negev desert.

2018: Gotland tree pulses. Solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Herzliya. Yona Fischer is the exhibition curator.

2020: During the pandemic, the Ein Harod Museum invited him for a carte blanche exhibition in the empty museum. He created an in-situ work there during a week of residency.

2021: Jetesais. Solo exhibition at the Ein Harod museum.
Snow and fire. Water and land. Sacred and profane. This exhibition generated a national controversy in Israel and the withdrawal of one of the works from the exhibition.

2022: Beith. Start of its third project between Israel and Egypt.

EXHIBITIONS

SOLO 

2021 Jetesais, ידעתיך Mishkan Museum of Art, Ein Harod. Israël Curator: Dr. Batsheva Goldman-Ida
2019 Gotland, three pulses,Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Curator: Yona Fischer
2006 Piazza dello amor perfetto, Gallery Attilalou, Paris Curator: Mathias Kiss

GROUP

2021 Alyah, Artspace TLV, “Frost” Curator: Yair Barak
2015 Kinah, Monastère Royal de Brou, “A l’ombre d’Eros” Curator: Marie Deparis-Yafil
2012 Areyouthere, Paris design week, Slott Gallery
2012 Areyouthere, Art Paris Art Fair, Grand Palais Curator: Paola Bjaringer
2011 Areyouthere, Festival CineNordica, Paris
2010 Areyouthere, Galerie Slott, Paris

FILMOGRAPHY

JETESAIS

2021 Performance Jetesais / Museum Ein Harod (Israel - black and white - 16/9 5’00 min)
2020 Jetesais / Shivta (Israel - color - 16/9 6’00 min)
2019 Jetesais / Nahal Kziv (Israel - color - 16/9 7’00 min)
2018 Jetesais / Nahal Kziv (Israel - color - 16/9 - 6’50 min.)
2017 Jetesais / Yakushima (Japan - color - 16/9 - 6’50 min) 2016 Jetesais / Lofoten (Noway - color - 16/9 - 9’00 min)

AREYOUTHERE

2014 Takhrikhin / Dead sea (Israel - color - 16/9 - 5’00 min)
2013 Areyouthere / Dead sea (Israel - color - 16/9 - 10’00 min)
2012 Areyouthere / Gotland (Sweden - color - 16/9 - 7’20 min)
2011 Alyah (Norway - color - 16/9 - 9’10 min)
2011 Kinah (France - color - 16/9 - 11’00 mins)
2010 Areyouthere / Dead sea (Israel - color -16/9 - 7’50 min)
2010 Areyouthere / Gotland (Sweden - color - 16/9 - 8’50 min)