Michael Halak’s art moves along the frontier between hyperrealism and conceptualism. The illusion of reality represented on canvas may be seductively beautiful and perfect, but equally conveys feelings of disruption and disintegration. The perfectly constructed and executed works depict landscapes, feeling, often impermanence, hybridity, entrapment or categorisation. Halak plays with our perception to make us feel what he feels, to experience his reality: a life in transition, in a place that is not really his.
After studying Fine Arts at Haifa University, Halak won a residence scholarship to attend the Florence Academy of Art, Italy in 2005. He graduated with an MFA from Haifa University in 2009. Halak has exhibited extensively internationally across the Middle East, Europe, and the USA. Halak has received several awards including the Ministry of Culture and Sports for contemporary artists (twice) and the Rappaport prize for a young painter amongst other accolades. Halak’s art can be found in several public and private collections.