Oren Eliav’s practice involves a complex relationship with other works of art, following a process that includes digital reworking, reproduction and distortion, alongside traditional oil painting techniques. The artist has utilized as his starting point for this show Velasquez’s”The Spinners” (“Las Hilanderas”). This work, composed as a stage within a stage or a story within a story, depicts three women, engaged in the process of weaving a carpet. The carpet, which appears in a room at the back, depicts a moment in a weaving contest between Athena and Arachne, in which Arachne unveils her achievement, a tapestry showing yet another work of art of a Velasquez contemporary – Rubens’ “Rape of Europa”,relating a myth about deception, impersonation and form shifting.

Eliav’s ensemble at Art Brussels, comprised of three paintings hanging in correlation to the room in “The Spinners”, adds a further dimension to the already perplexing work by the Spanish master. Illusionistically rendered, the works oscillate between painting and tapestry and continue Eliav’s fascination with the entangled web of paintings within paintings.