1949 Born in Bayhan, Yemen, immigrated to Israel.
1971-3 Studied at Bezalel Academy of Art & Design.
1975 Studied at Reading University, Fine Arts.
1976 St. Martin's School of Art, London. Studied advanced course of sculpture.
1977-82 Taught sculpture at St. Martin's School of Art.

2000 REFUSALON, San Francisco, U.S.A. (Click to see REFUSALON website)
2000 Neanderthal Museum,Mettmann, Germany.
2000 Leuchter & Peltzer, Dusseldorf, Germany.
2000 Refusalon, San Francisco, USA.
1999 Mercedes Benz Forum, Sttutgart, Germany.
1999 Earl- Lu Gallery, Singapore.
1998 "Evolution and Theory", Ambrosino Gallery, Miami, USA.
1998 San-Francisco Art Institute, USA.
1998 Museum Beelden aan Zee, Schveningen, Holland.
1997 "Evolution and Theory", Herzliya Museum, Israel.
1997 Cheluche Gallery (with David Mach), Tel-Aviv, Israel.
1997 Im Heppacher Gallery, Esslingen, Germany.
1997 "Evolution and Theory", Annandale Galleries, Sydney, Australia.
1995 Jason - Rhodes Gallery, London, England.
1994 Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, England.
1993 Galerie im.: Heppacher, Esslingen, Germany.
1993 Ecke Galerie, Augsburg, Germany.
1992 Bengamin Rhodes Gallery, London.
1990-1 Collins Gallery, Glasgow, touring to Carlisle Museum and Art Gallery, York City Art Gallery,
1990 Annandale Galleries, Sydney, Australia, Galerie Albrecht, Munich, Germany.
1989 The Art Gallery, Melbourne, Australia.
1989 Galerie Albrecht, Munich.
1988 Venice Biennale: represented Israel.
1987 Albert Totah Gallery, New-York.
1987 "Creatures of a Private Fable" Bradford City Museum.
1986 Art & Project, Amsterdam, Holland.
1985 Benjamin Rhodes Gallery, London.
1984 121 Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium.
1982 LYC Museum, Cumbria.
1980 Air Gallery, London.

2000 "BRONZE"-Contemporary British Sculpture-Holland park,London,U.K.
2000 "Looking ahead-vision of Israel"-ICA-San Jose, California U.S.A.
2000 "L'Homme qui Marche" Palais Royal, Paris, France.
2000 Narcisse Blesse - Passage de Retz - Paris, France.
2000 Den Haag Sculpture, Den Haag - Holland.
1999 "The Shape of the Century (100 years of sculpture in Britain)".
1999 Sallisbury Catherdal,Sallisbury, and Canary Wharf, London, UK.
1999 "ANIMAL" - Musee Bourdelle Paris, France.
1999 Arists books-Refusalon San francisco , California U.S.A.
1998 "Israeli Sculpture - 1948-1998", Tefen Museum, Israel.
1998 Museum of Modern Art, Dubrovnik, Croatia.
1998 "British Figurative Art,Part 2 - Sculpture", Flower East Gallery, London.
1997 Ambrosino Gallery, Miami, USA.
1997 "Fantasia", Herzliya Museum, Israel.
1997 IX International Bienal, Portugal.
1996 100 Park Lane, London.
1995 "5 Years to 2000", Herzliya Museum, Israel.
1995 Ambrosino Gallery, Miami, USA.
1995 VIII International Bienal, Portugal.
1993 A collaboration of music and art, with Peter Gabriel, Land Mark Tower, Yokahama, Japan.
1993 "Anti Patos", Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
1993 "Locus", Fisher Gallery, Los-Angeles.
1992 National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seul, S. Korea.
1992 "The new metaphysics", Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney, Australia.
1991 Kunsteuropa, Germany.
1991 "Places and Mainstream", Museum Hara, Tokyo, Japan.
1990 "Jewish Art of the 20th Century", Barbican, London.
1989 "Sculptures Drawing" with Joel Fisher and Franz Bernhard, Galerie Albrecht, Munich.
1989 "Recent Aquisitions", Tel-Aviv Museum, Israel.
1987 Ek'ymose Art Contemporain, Bordeaux, France.
1987 Metal & Motion, Touring from Brighton Museum & Art Gallery.
1987 "Palaces of Culture", Stoke City Museum & Art Gallery.
1987 Israeli Artists, Brooklyn Museum, New - York Show travelled to Europe, Japan and Korea.
1987 Museum of israeli Art, Ramat-Gan, Israel.
1987 "Fresh Paint", Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
1987 Tefen Museum, Israel.
1987 Edward Totah Gallery, London.
1986 "From Two Worlds", Whitechapel Art Gallery London & The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh.
1986 IV International Bienal, Portugal.
1986 Joint of Sculpture & Dance Choreography with Celia Hulten & The London Contemporary Dance Company.
1985 Art & Project, Amsterdam Holland.
1985 "Who is afraid of Red, Yellow & Blue?" Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol.
1984 "Attitudes 84", Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
1984 "80 Years of Sculpture ", Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
1983 "Pegan Echo", Riverside Studios, London.
1983 "Tel Hai" - International Art Meeting,Isreal.

"Zadok Ben-David's unique experience brings us a sculpture that is fresh and young and mature. Past experience and the brief history of this sculpture shows that we can already learn something from it.
And this something proves how far sculpture can be, on the one hand, charged, serious, sensitive, communicative, and, on the other hand, amusing, perhaps even entertaining, and certainly surprising. And beyond this - a lexicon and a parable and a three-dimensional visual seismograph for sensitivities and syllables which have not yet been formulated within us.
Which brings us to the question-when does a sculpture stop being a sculpture and become an immediate experience that is beyond sculpture?
Meir Agassi, Bristol-London, February 1988


Zadok Ben-David was born in Yemen in 1949, and was brought up in Israel. He studied art in Jerusalem, University of Reading and St Martin School of Art, in London, where he taught sculpture for a few years.
He has been exhibiting his work in galleries and museums around the world. He lives and works in London.
"Ben-David's sculptural language, which becomes defined in Evolution and Theory - the title already insinuates a Darwinian seriousness and post-modernist irony is a demonstration of the poetic beauty which exists between - delusion and scientific facts, of the problematic distance between the illusion and the object in art and sculpture. Both science and art tend to present (in the laboratory, in the museum) objects as indisputable "facts" (in addition to the illustrations in the science books and the encyclopedias of the l9th century); but, after some time, when the initial and hypnotic magic of understanding and seeing dissipates, we do begin to have doubts regarding the status of these facts - the scientific exhibit or the surface of the drawing or photograph as "truth."
Mier Agassi - Scenes from Apocalypse and Comedy, Evolution and


In his installation entitled "Evolution and Theory," Yemen-born, Israeli artist Zadok Ben-David fashions witty and playful visual puns to construct a provocative commentary on both the romance and realities of scientific discovery.
The installation consists of 165 hand-cut pieces of aluminium plates appropriating scientific illustrations dating from the 1800s, such as visual accounts of laboratory experiments with electricity, velocity, and gravity, interspersed with life-size figures of apes and early ancestors of Homo Sapiens. The plates, painted black, are scattered evenly and positioned upright on a smooth bed of fine sand trowelled so meticulously it appears to be a flat, solid surface.
To preserve the smoothness, viewers are forbidden to enter the gallery space itself, and are thus prevented from walking amidst the plates, which crowd the room as if guests at a cocktail reception.
Ben-David thus physically conveys that things "scientific," as represented by the plates, are seen by the public as rarefied and removed rather than as accessible. The fact that the artist depicts scientific imagery as flat and colorless, as if merely shadows, infers a viewpoint that scientific discovery is just an illusion, without solid substance.
(click to enlarge)
Reena Jana from 'Zadok Ben-David - San Francisco Art Institute'


"Zadok Ben-David lays out the prolongect sculpture-science project which has peoccupied him, in different versions, sice the early 1990s. Since Leonardo. Holhein, and through Vermeer to Duchamp science has cast a restles shadow on the sceptic subconscious of the curious artist, and especially the one who searches for ironic parallels between rational reality and emotional reality. between the tyranny of scientific arbitrariness and humanist scepticism."
Mier Agassi / Scenes from Apocalypse and Comedy, Evolution and Theory

Zadok Ben-David