Assaf Gruber, born in 1980 in Jerusalem, lives and works in Paris and Tel Aviv. A graduated of the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-arts de Paris, where he worked under the tutorship of Jean-Marc Bustamante and Richard Deacon, he won the 2008 Les amis des Beaux –arts de Paris Prize. His sculpture, photography, and video works have been shown in group exhibitions in New York, Paris, Lyon, Tel Aviv, Amsterdam, Gent and Sarajevo.

Assaf Gruber has developed an individual approach to aesthetics and to the production of cross-cultural values. While his early projects give visibility and form to narratives from his personal background, more recent works reveal an analysis of conflicts pertaining to contemporary civilization: the absurdity of force, power relationships, coded and implicit aggression, intrusion, landscapes of enduring violence, imbalances between the naiveté of childhood and the rationality and irrationality of adulthood. His visual creations implicitly tackle conflict and violence and highlight their emergence, interdependence and interference.

It is the impossibility of establishing dialogue between the seemingly antagonistic elements that challenges Gruber's commitment to making an affirmative gesture through artistic practice. “I combine very fragile materials, such as photographic paper, with solid, sometimes rough metal, for example. Protecting iron with delicate, light-sensitive paper, stands for a method of construction,” says Gruber.