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Born in Jerusalem Israel in 1977, Jac Lahav is among an influential cadre of contemporary American artists whose work employs a wide range of media to explore themes of art history, individual and shared cultural identities, personal narratives, literature, psychology, materiality, and familial structures.

Lahav received a BA in Psychology from Wesleyan University CT and studied for his masters at Brooklyn College NY. Lahav’s practice quickly expanded to embrace a wide range of media including sculpture, painting, drawing, and installation, yielding a complex multidisciplinary practice that incorporates diverse materials rich with symbolism and personal history.

Lahav’s work is known for its narrative embedding of a pointed range of everyday materials and objects, often associated with his childhood and frequently referencing aspects of history and cultural identity. Many of Lahav’s more recent works delve into existential themes such as meditations on personal and collective anxiety, immigrant assimilation, non-linear family frameworks, and the painted surface.

Lahav’s makes large series of paintings that tell complex personal stories. Their love of painting as a medium shines through with complex and visually seductive surfaces in each painted surface.
Key themes to the artists exploration are under-recognized cultural histories (Great Americans Series & 48 Jews Series), pop-culture (Record Paintings Series) and Lahav’s journey as a foster parent (Foster Paintings Series).
Solo museum shows include the Slater Art Museum CT, Richmond Art Museum IN, Longview MFA TX, Saginaw Art Museum MI, Florence Griswold Museum CT among others, and Lahav’s work can be found in multiple public collections, including the Jewish Museum Milwaukee, Mount Holyoke Art Museum, and more.
Rauschenberg Foundations, CT Humanities, CT Office Of The Arts, Community Foundation, Virginia Commission for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts are among some of the institutions who have supported Lahav’s work through grants and exhibition funding.