Keeping it fresh

Tel Aviv’s art fair opens November in style.

By ARI MARRACHE
Tel Aviv’s art fair (photo credit: PR)
Tel Aviv’s art fair
(photo credit: PR)
Israel’s leading contemporary art fair, Fresh Paint, is set to open its seventh annual event on November 4 in Tel Aviv. In keeping with its tradition of selecting a different venue every year, Fresh Paint CEO Sharon Tilinger and artistic director and curator Yifat Gurion have chosen Tel Aviv’s new municipal sports arena, the new home of the Hapoel Tel Aviv basketball club. The two have utilized the space in its entirety to house the various art and design exhibitions.
Since its inception in 2008, Fresh Paint (Tzeva Tari) has become one of the most influential annual art events.
To maintain Fresh Paint’s objectivity and quality, the fair uses an ever-changing panel of 12, made up of art critics, curators, gallery owners and collectors from Israel and around the world.
This Tel Aviv art fair presents an eclectic hand-picked selection of works by leading contemporary galleries and independent artists spread out over 6,600 square meters. This year, Fresh Paint is going for a project-centered format.
According to Gurion, the quality of works presented at Fresh Paint 7 is “higher than ever,” and occurrences over the past summer in Israel have inspired two major contradictory and complementary trends: “aggression and hardship on one hand, and total escapism on the other.”
The main objective of the art fair is to launch the careers of up-andcoming artists as it has done for the such artists as Ohad Matalon, Iva Kafri and Know Hope. It does so through its Design Greenhouse, aimed at showcasing the fresh talent of 50 emerging artists.
This year’s list of promising artists and designers includes Gidon Levin, who brings humor to his work by using pixels to censor a cactus in his photographic piece titled The Israeli.
Another one to keep an eye out for is Hilla Shamia, who effortlessly fuses metal and wood with a breathtaking design entitled Wood Casting.
A further must-see is Amir Shefet, whose oil on canvas Work in Progress strikes a perfect balance between complete and incomplete.
A staunch supporter of Fresh Paint, Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai has said he is “delighted that Fresh Paint affords the opportunity to refocus the attention on different sites and city buildings every year. The fair exposes their artistic beauty by taking them away them from their functional context.”
Fresh Paint runs from November 4 to 8 at the new municipal sports arena in Tel Aviv. For more information, visit www.freshpaint.co.il.