Collapsing Painting

Shoham's practice is constantly evolving. Elements change, develop and reappear in new forms and contexts. The resulting paintings raise questions about authenticity and fakery, reality and reflection, construction and destruc- tion. His work deals with beauty and temptation, the tension between high art and low art, and between abstraction and realism. Blurring the difference between kitsch and modernism while raising questions about these two dichotomies. It is a personal quest, raising conceptual questions about the craft of painting and its position within the world. Shoham's grandfather founded a family timber yard in the 1930s in Tel-Aviv. His childhood memories are scattered with sawdust and towering stacks of plywood sheets. It was an exciting place in which to hide and play. Shortly after the patriarch’s death in 2003, a fire destroyed the family business along with souvenirs and documents from the past 70 years. These remembrances and events are manifest in Shoham's work in ways formal and metaphoric.