The Fresh Paint Art Fair is launching a new decade with an expanded program breaking out of the boundaries of the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds with new, innovative formats and a multi-disciplinary main exhibition which deals, among other things, with the blurring of distinctions between different artistic disciplines
The Main Event
Considered to be one of the biggest, most influential annual events in the Israeli art world with more than 30,000 visitors coming through, Fresh Paint is a contemporary art fair that spans six days of in a multitude of venues and mediums. Many of the top galleries and main art institutions in Israel attend, including the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the Design Museum Holon, as well as international auction houses and art institutions like Sotheby's. You don’t need to be a millionaire to shop the fair, Fresh Paint has a unique model - the Independent Artists’ Greenhouse – which serves as a launch pad for selected, local Israeli artists whose work you can snag at wallet-friendly price points (at least by highbrow art standards). Also on deck is Fresh Design, a section dedicated to showcasing contemporary industrial and product design studios and projects.
Founders Yifat Gurion and Sharon Tillinger, in conjunction with Faza, the creative content and production company, have launched the 11th annual renewal of Fresh Paint, the largest and most central event of its kind in Israel. The objective, as usual, is bringing the general public into close contact with the world of art, as a meeting point between artists, collectors and art dealers. This year's dialogue centers on the current and growing overlap between art, design, crafts and technology, as the basis of the central exhibition bringing together local and international artists and artisans in a variety of disciplines (Pavilion A11). Over the weekend of the fair (Friday-Sunday, on the international model) satellite exhibitions will take place at about 10 locations around Tel Aviv. Exhibitors and leading galleries, as well as museums and alternative exhibition halls including hotels, restaurants and boutiques are all opening their doors to a celebration of art all around the city during Fresh Paint.
Fresh Panit
What’s more is that you don’t need to be a millionaire to shop the fair; Fresh Paint has a unique model– dubbed the Independent Artists’ Greenhouse – which serves as a launch pad for select local Israeli artists whose work you can snag at wallet-friendly price points (at least by highbrow art standards). This year’s Fresh Paint provides a stage for five greenhouse graduates from previous years, in unique projects and solo exhibitions shown for the first time at the fair. Also on deck is Fresh Design, a section dedicated to showcasing contemporary industrial and product design studios and projects.
Among the events: Kuchinate, a collective of refugee women from Africa, has created an exceptionally large mobile especially for Fresh Paint, in cooperation with artist Gil Yefman, a graduate of the fair's 'Hothouse Project' and winner of the 2018 Rapaport Prize. Artists from Jerusalem's Agrippas 12 collective will visit Kiryat Hamelaha with a joint project, and the Apparatus 22 artists collective from Romania will erect a hanging display at the Romanian Institute of Culture. World fashion brand COS has a cultural project for the first time in Israel with multidisciplinary curator Ohad Benit, resembling Benit's annual projects at Design Week in Milan. Magasin III Jaffa will stage a solo exhibition by international artist Cosima von Bonin.
Secret Postcard Project
The Secret Postcard Project has become an inseparable part of Fresh Paint. It's an original model giving exposure to artists not represented by galleries, at the start of their careers. Artists displaying in the 'Hothouse Project' are chosen by a panel of experts whose members change every year, including curators, gallery operators, critics and collectors from Israel and the rest of the world. The greenhouse was established with the specific mission of identifying young and promising talents and exposing them to the professional art work and the general public. In previous years about 50 artists were included; their works can be purchased at inexpensive prices. This year's Fresh Paint provides a stage for five greenhouse graduates from previous years, in unique projects and solo exhibitions shown for the first time at the fair.
Fresh Paint
Fresh Design
Fresh Design has been an integral part of Fresh Paint for the last six years, offering product designers opportunities to encounter the general public. Attention to the design field is especially high this year, with 30 designers due to show their work, 14 of them for the very first time. Cooperation with the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design has expanded with three projects in different disciplines. The visual communications department works with the Joint Distribution Committee in a project of digital posters aimed at changing attitudes towards people with special needs. This year's theme is called 'Alone on the Network'. In Digital Carpet, a project by three graduates of the jewelry and fashion department a 3D printer will produce jewelry and fashion items accompanied by videos showing how the products are designed. In addition, the industrial design department will deal with unique interpretations for ceramic coffee-making and serving implements in different societies around the world, including a stand where visitors can drink coffee from the unique implements.
Fresh Paint Live
For the first time at the fair, there will be a new format called Fresh Paint Live, a new program which offers a look into the process of creating, putting the focus on the development of the work and providing a different experience as time goes by, including live shows and a performance by the Choreographers Association. Events will take place between 6-9 p.m. every day during the fair, at various locations throughout the venue.
Fresh Paint
May 31-June 3. Expo Tel Aviv and various locations across the city. freshpaint.co.il