ELAD LAROM CAME TO VISIT ME IN MY STUDIO A FEW WEEKS AGO. I ASKED HIM TO POSE FOR ME FOR SOME DRAWINGS, THINKING OF PLACING HIM AS THE KING IN „STONED HAREM“. „IT SUITS HIM WELL,“ I THOUGHT, AT ONCE BOTH RELAXED AND AROUSED, TAKING IN THE EROTIC TENSION OF THE SCENE IN A CONCENTRATED, SOMEWHAT DETACHED WAY, A CONCEPTUAL PAINTER…

The first time we met was many years ago. He was a wild-eyed kid, anxious, overflowing with talent and restlessness.

Wondering about art school, we struck an instant understanding and friendship… shortly after we both dropped out… disappointed, bored.

We both found our ways back to the art Academy and to the world of art, eventually.

With this perspective of time, what I find most striking about his painting is how little it has changed, how clear his vision has been since the very beginning!

He refers to himself as a “conceptual painter”, this to say he is a “painter of images”, his painting is “functional”, an effective instrument for the execution of a visual rhyme, sentence, riddle, or joke. Using the minimal effort necessary.

He is a virtuous painter, his hands firm, his eyes clear, he can paint anything, and fast!

Some years ago, in preparation for an exhibition, we sat together, and he showed me some paintings in a bar, with a laptop. For about an hour, he was flashing his paintings! hitting me with hundreds of images, shot rhythmically one after the other!

An experience quite similar awaits whoever leaves through his new book, “Portals & Commodities”.  It’s divided into three chapters, as Elad puts it: 1) “Tribal, Local, Family-like”, 2) “Universal, Existential”, and 3) “False Attraction”, dealing with the medium, with painting itself, the illusion.

Portals and Commodities

Monograph summarizing fifteen years of painting by Elad Larom

Hardcover: 244 pages, 32 × 23 cm

Print run: 500, 10 copies come as a collectors edition in a slipcase with a signed original watercolor

Language: English

Producer: Ran Kasmy Ilan

Publisher: The Artist Residence Herzliya

Graphic Design: Field Day Studio (Zohar Koren and Idan Am-Shalem)

Texts: Dr. Shaul Setter, Sharon Kantor, Ran Kasmy Ilan

ISBN: 978-965-90190-0-7

By Ofir Dor