Haifa City- the Florence of Israeli Street Art

Haifa City- the Florence of Israeli Street Art

Haifa is a multi-cultural city of social involvement with strong community ties that are reflected in the street art community as well. In the early 2000's, groups like "Pyramida" and "Block – Art in the Street", emerged in Haifa and created art in the streets that dealt with the urban features of the city.

Block Group started some very important processes that are present in Haifa until today—those of high quality and very developed urban art projects, involving artists in the community and emphasising  bi-nationality. For example, different signs in Haifa's urban landscape are usually written in Arabic as well as Hebrew and English. That is true also regarding texts that make up the vibrant, diversified and complex urban art scene in Haifa, where whole graffiti pieces, tags, street poems and other types of texts in street art pieces can often be found in Arabic.

Broken Fingaz Crew

Haifa can be thought of as the “Florence of Israeli Street Art" in a way. It populates several artistic geniuses, such as the very recognized Broken Fingaz crew, individual artists like Keos, Crash, Tipa Graphic and many others that are living and working in the same place at the same time, making enormous artistic and cultural contributions—much like the Renaissance artists of 16th century Florence in Italy. During the past few years, Haifa also became an important center for original Israeli hip-hop and rap music.

Kartel 

An ideal way to get to know Haifa's cultural and artistic DNA, is through an Alternative Tel Aviv graffiti and street art tour in downtown Haifa which focuses on the leading artists, graffiti writers and crews that make up the unique urban art scene in the city. Tours deal with independent and free art in the streets of Haifa and are finished with a visit to the Kartel compound—Israel's no. 1 urban art attraction, a huge abandoned building covered with amazing graffiti and street art by leading Israeli and International street artists.

- by Yael Shapira

Introducing the Avant-Garde Institute, Warsaw

Introducing the Avant-Garde Institute, Warsaw

The Institute of Avant-Garde is an extraordinary gallery at the site of the studio of late Polish artist Edward Krasiński. It is preserved exactly in the same state as it was left in 2004, after the artist’s death. Edward Krasiński was one of the most important protagonists of the Polish neo-avant-garde from the 1960s and '70s. 

The main feature of his studio is blue Scotch tape, which he stuck horizontally at the height of 130 centimetres, “everywhere and on everything”.

 “I don’t know whether this is art”, he commented, “but it’s certainly scotch blue, width 19 mm, length unknown”. Krasinski’s works are currently showing at the Tate Liverpool until March 2017, where his blue Scotch is juxtaposed with the Yves Klein exhibition.

Edward Krasiński in his studio

Edward Krasiński in his studio

The studio is placed on the eleventh floor amongst a block of flats in Warsaw’s city center. From 1970 Krasiński shared the atelier with Henryk Stażewski, another well-known avant-garde and constructivist artist.The studio is open to the public but because of the unusual conservation restrictions, groups have to be small and must be booked in advance.

The terrace pavilion which was newly attached to the studio houses all kinds of exhibitions, lectures, workshops and academic sessions—forming a broad context for the tradition created by Stażewski and Krasiński. The confrontation of Krasiński’s ephemeral works with new exhibitions and critical reflection makes the Avant-Garde Institute a unique experiment in contemporary museum practice.

- by Zuzanna Zasacka

Taryn Simon "Paperwork and the Will of Capital, Tel Aviv Museum

Taryn Simon "Paperwork and the Will of Capital, Tel Aviv Museum

When entering “Paperwork and the Will of Capital”, Taryn Simon’s first solo exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum in Israel, visitors might become seduced by the 16 large colorful prints representing floral centerpieces. It therefore might be surprising that one of the starting points for the show was a picture of Mussolini and Hitler from 1938 signing the Munich agreement and separated by a floral centerpiece. The second inspiration was 17th century Dutch still life painting and the notion of the “impossible bouquet”, where artists were aiming to represent flowers together that could not grow naturally in the same geographical place.

The flowers represented in the show were present at different international conferences, where world leaders signed treaties, decrees and accords—many of which revealed themselves not long after as false promises. The prints, framed with heavy mahogany wood reminiscent of boardroom furniture, are accompanied by an explanatory text about the agreement which was signed in their presence. 

Simon imported 4000 specimens from Holland’s biggest flower auction and worked with a botanist to identify the types of flowers.  In the center of the space, Simon placed five sculptural elements, pedestals that contain the same flowers used for the prints, which Simon had dried and sewn on archival herbarium paper.  

Visitors to the show might wonder why Simon chose these floral arrangements as the center of her exhibition. The flowers act like silent witnesses to lost promises. Like many of her previous research-based projects, here, Simon tackles questions surrounding international politics, economics, the notion of the archive, memory and time.

Until January 28th, Tel Aviv Museum of Art

- by Sarah Peguine

Interview: in conversation with London-based artist Scarlett Bowman

Interview: in conversation with London-based artist Scarlett Bowman

Scarlett Bowman’s work addresses material culture and modern craft. Her approach is directed through craft and industry where she takes mundane, everyday materials and re- contextualises them to remove their intended use, instead creating a new, tactile and aesthetic appeal. London Art Insider, Marine Tanguy sat down with the artist to discuss her practice. 

Marine Tanguy: Your works rethink our consumer's habits and very much what materials we use on a daily basis, why such an obsession? 
Scarlett Bowman: Medium has always been at the core of what I do. The readymade has always carried so much in terms of weight and meaning – hence why much of the materials I use can be purchased from my local supermarket as opposed to my local art shop.
I feel like I can only express my concerns and anxieties through materials. Their once utilitarian value gives way to a more symbolic value, inviting us to think about the complex process involved in taking a raw material to its final form. To think about abundance, banality, process, labour, dependency, industrialisation, consumption, fetishism.


 
MT: How do you choose the materials you use to create new body of works? 
SB: I always try to create a dialogue within a new work. I incorporate old and new materials, recycling them into works and thus incorporating the notion of prolific production that underlies modern life. Much of what I acquire I find or come across unintentionally. I prefer this as it provides less of a choice - I feel that, in the face of unlimited choice, certain boundaries are important to implement, else you can drive yourself mad. It’s sort of like an unconscious scavenging… I’m a serial hoarder so I am constantly collecting materials, and then I start the editing process when I feel I have enough.

MT: Do your works take inspiration from specific writings? 
SB: Very much so - they change all the time. Currently; ‘Plasticity: An Art History of the Mutable’ by Dieter Rubel, ‘Reading Things: The Alibi of Use’ by Niel Cummings, ‘Materials against Materiality’ by Tim Ingold, ‘Thinking Through Craft’ by Glenn Adamson, and always ‘I, Pencil’ by Leonard Read.

MT: How far will your experimentation take you?
SB: In so much as taking my practice further, experimenting is vital. More so in terms of expanding my material use down directed trajectories, ones specific to particular industries, cultures and countries. I have an upcoming residency in Senegal that will involve a very different approach to acquiring materials, and consequently a very different aesthetic. It will be interesting to take the same concerns and approaches to a drastically different community, where resources and materials are extremely limited and harder to obtain. 

Weirdest artistic hub ever

Weirdest artistic hub ever

The Central bus station TLV, a place where I give art tours and also just hang out and explore, is probably one of the strangest places in the city. You won’t believe what’s going on in this weird place. Amongst the various shops, marginal hangouts and underground activity, this amazing and strange bus station became a hub for contemporary art. Artists studios, art theaters, performance school and even institutionalized street art are all to find in this special venue. 

The Central bus station’s story begins in 1963 with the initiative of construction contractor Arie Piltz. Piltz imagined a new modern building that will not only replace the exciting old bus station of TLV but will also be a huge mall. His vision was that 1 million people will pass in the station each day! That was outrageous since at that time Israel had only 3 million citizens living in it. But he managed to recruit not only the money but also Ram Karmi which was the most important Israeli architect at the time. Together they planned a modern labyrinth made to make people wonder in the six floors of the station/ shopping mall.

Pic: Alon Arshov

The construction began in 1967 but soon after it went through budgetary problems, making the owners sell 750 out of 1,500 stores built in the center. That brought up even more problems trying to make common decisions with all of them. Besides that citizens of the south TLV neighborhood started to protest against the enormous building being raised in their back yard. Construction stopped for six years and eventually it took almost 30 years for the bus station to be open for the public. It was a major disaster from day one. Nobody needed such a big shopping mall and so many buses. Many of the stores never opened and two of the six floors are deserted until this very day. 

Such a strange place this is, mysterious and leading to disorientation, hosting various little shops and oriental restaurants. But it’s also full of color and a great inspiration for the art growing amidst it. Such inspiration took the “Mystorin Theater group”, specializing in site specific performance. They created “Seven” – a show running in all the floors of the station (even the deserted ones). It is a non-verbal show inspired by the seven deadly sins as portrayed in Dante's poem The Divine Comedy. The audience is led by the actors as they dance and sing with the central bus station as their décor.

"Seven"- pic: Oz Madar

Today at the station you can also find about two dozens of artists studios and a main gallery for contemporary art. There is also a Yiddish museum and library in which shows and lectures take place. A school for performance art and a second, more traditional theater portraying even Shakespeare’s writings.  On the 7th floor (yes there are seven floors today… it’s a long story), you will find the biggest indoors exhibition of street art in Israel. It began in 2013 with about a hundred street artists that were invited to decorate the walls. But since then it grew and today the whole floor is filled with beautiful murals with different and exciting styles. 

Street art on the station's 7th floor- pic: Mati Ale

There is much more to say about the central bus station and the art within it, but it is better to go and explore for yourselves. Or join my tour  Each visit is mysterious and full of surprises.

- by Shani Werner