Walking through the “Wonderlab” exhibit at the L Gallery in Tel Aviv, visitors encounter surfboards covered in embroidery, aluminum sculptures, colorful Jerusalem-inspired works, and paintings made from collected fragments. During a recent visit to L Gallery, Israel Daily News toured the exhibition and spoke with artist Gil Goren and curator Katya Sinitsina about Goren’s unconventional path into the art world, the inspiration behind Wonderlab, and the role galleries play in presenting contemporary art.
The exhibition’s title reflects a sense of discovery. Goren and the curatorial team spent days of Spring 2026 discussing possible names before settling on Wonderlab, a title they felt captured the experience of moving through the gallery and finding unexpected connections between the works.
The exhibition is the latest chapter in an artistic career that began later than most.
Gil Goren did not become a professional artist until his fifties. Before entering the art world, he worked in advertising. A trip to New York became an important turning point in his career. In 2017, he participated in Street to Tower, an exhibition at 4 World Trade Center. He would later hold a solo exhibition titled “Happiness” at World Trade Gallery.
When COVID-19 shut down public spaces, Goren shifted his focus toward paintings that could be shipped around the world. Over the following years, he continued exhibiting in Israel and abroad while expanding his work across painting, sculpture, collage, and installation.
At one point, a highly respected gallery offered him an exclusive arrangement to show his work in their gallery. He declined.
“If I were 25, okay,” Goren recalled out loud. “I was 55.”
Rather than committing to years of exclusivity within a single gallery, he chose to continue independently.
Many of the works on display began years before they appeared on the gallery walls. Goren builds his pieces from photographs, maps, paint, old posters and even reflective Starbucks coffee bags, layering everyday materials into larger compositions. Surfboards that had sat unused in his studio eventually became canvases of their own, transformed with paint, embroidery and collage into some of the exhibition’s most recognizable works.
Several pieces of art in the exhibit draw directly from Goren’s personal life. One of the recurring motifs began after months of unsuccessfully trying to get the attention of the woman who would later become his wife. In an interview with the Israel Daily News, Goren described sending her bouquet after bouquet of flowers until she finally agreed to go out with him. The flowers later became the basis for a series that continues to appear throughout his work.
If while reviewing the exhibit, you are reminded of Jerusalem, you’d be right. Sights and symbols like the “I heart Jerusalem” sign and a reference to the Jaffa Gate appear repeatedly throughout the visual show. These pieces of Israel are seen through all types of mediums – paint, aluminum, and plastic – all bright colors and layered.
Goren pushes back against the idea that art needs to be weighed down by heavy intellectual frameworks.
“I don’t want to bring philosophical and psychological problems into people’s homes,” he said. “I want to bring joy and happiness to the world.”
Curator Katya Sinitsina said she was drawn to what she described as the vitality of Goren’s work. Rather than building the exhibition around a single theme, she said the goal was to showcase the range of his artistic practice and the different directions it has taken over the years.
Much of the exhibition relies on texture, layering, and physical presence, making many of the pieces difficult to appreciate fully through Israel Daily News photographs alone.
For visitors, Wonderlab offers more than an exhibition of colorful paintings and sculptures. It traces the path of an artist who reinvented himself in his fifties and built a career by following curiosity rather than convention. As guests move through the gallery, they leave with not only a deeper understanding of Goren’s artistic journey, but also a glimpse into the optimism that continues to shape his work.
Discussion about this post