Tomer Aluf

Tomer Aluf is a New York-based painter who creates gestural tableaus that vacillate between figuration and abstraction. The content of his paintings—often taken from photographs, stories, or the news—materialize from a phantasmagoria of oil paint applied loosely to canvas in thick daubs, energized brushstrokes, and rough streaks. His brash paint application and symbolic imagery have been likened to neo-expressionist Philip Guston, but Aluf’s obsessions reveal a particular predilection to pleasure. Wine glasses, heeled boots, the exclamation of “Oi!!,” pointed breasts, donkeys, comici dell’arte, and lobster claws are layered into busy, messy, tactile swirls that remix the visceral enjoyments of the bohemian way of life.


Tomer Aluf’s work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Retrospective in Hudson, New York and KANSAS in New York and in group exhibitions at the Bronx Museum, Ramat Gan’s Museum for Israeli Art, Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, Cleopatra Gallery in Brooklyn, and Andel 31 in Copenhagen. He has received awards from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, Dedalus Foundation, and the American Cultural Foundation. He is co-founder of SOLOWAY Gallery, Brooklyn.