Michal Rubens

Michal Rubens

Michal Rubens, born in 1980, Israel. Currently lives and paints in Potsdam, Germany. Graduated with honors from the Beit Berl College Faculty of Arts (HaMidrasha), where she was awarded the Raffi Lavie prize and a scholarship for artistic excellence. She has also completed a cultural studies program as part of a fellowship from the Alma Institute and has a M.A.A.T from the University of Haifa.
Michal Rubens’ paintings draw from and tie together, her family history and her own experiences, alongside collective memories that are so deeply ingrained that they have become like true, personal memories. Her works expose the subtext of the images, the stories behind the paintings. In some cases this exposure is subtle, and in others it is explicit and even violent. Themes explored in her work include the relationship between painting and photography, and representations of landscape and place. Through these themes, Rubens seeks to capture the tension between the internal and the external, the concrete and the metaphorical, the beautiful and the horrific. An almost naïve realism combines with an otherworldly darkness, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy, or nightmare.
Rubens works mainly with oil, acrylics, aquarelle, ink, and mixed techniques. Her paintings are characterized by strong colors muddied by dark spaces.
Rubens’s work has been shown in several solo exhibitions and group exhibitions in Israel and Berlin.