According to Haaretz, Israel’s Minister of Culture, Miri Regev, has announced that Gal Weinstein will represent Israel at the 2017 Venice Biennale, which will be held from May 13 to November 26 in 2017.

Weinstein said that his proposal focused on the evolution of his work in recent years. Through painting, photography, installation, sculpture, and video he often explores the scientific investigation and understanding of natural phenomena as well as the inherent chaos of the physical world. Weinstein has also worked extensively with steel wool as “an effective substitute for drawing.”

Born in Ramat Gan in 1970, the Tel Aviv-based artist earned a BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem in 1997. He had numerous solo exhibitions including shows at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, and the San Francisco Art Institute. Weinstein was also selected to represent Israel at the 2002 São Paulo Biennial.

He was awarded the Beatrice S. Kolliner Young Israeli Artist Award in 2006, the Israel Cultural Excellence Award in 2004, the Sharet Foundation Fellowship in 2001, and has received multiple Artist-Teacher fellowships from the Israeli Ministry of Education and Culture.

Weinstein and the curator of the Israeli Pavilion, Tami Katz-Friedman—former chief curator of the Haifa Museum of Art in Israel—were selected by a committee formed by the visual arts department of the ministry of culture that consists of Mira Lapidot, chief curator of the Israel Museum, and Meir Aharonson, director of the Ramat-Gan Museum.