Fresh Paint fair brings new Israeli art to potential collectors
Six-day Tel Aviv art event introduces artists and their works to new audiences, with everything for sale
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
This year’s Fresh Paint art fair in Tel Aviv, billed as the largest in the country, will close Monday night after six days, allowing 40,000 budding collectors to explore the works of emerging and veteran artists
It was held in a series of hangars at the Kremnitzky Technical Center, which until recently served as the Israel Electric Corporation’s operational center in Tel Aviv, between the Bitzaron residential neighborhood and the office towers on Yigal Alon Street.
Some 40 newer Israeli artists were showcased in solo and group exhibits in the Greenhouse section of the fair, while several dozen well-known artists had their curated works shown in the main Art Project section.
“It’s an amazing opportunity,” said Doron Adorian, one of the emerging artists from the Greenhouse, whose oil paintings feature the thistles and flowers of the fields around her kibbutz home. Some portrayed those fields going up in flames due to missiles fired from Lebanon.
Adorian left her home in the north following the Hezbollah attacks during the first year of the war and has been producing her artwork in a borrowed Tel Aviv studio.
As of Sunday night, more than a few of Adorian’s oils had been sold.
Fresh Design, the third section of the fair, shows the works of industrial designers ranging from chic textiles and ceramics to lighting fixtures and smaller pieces of furniture.
Many of the artists, alongside guides and curators, were available in each section, ready to talk about the artwork in the freestyle gallery setup.
At Fresh Paint, everything is for sale, and by the fifth day of the event, many of the artworks had been sold.
The fair is also an opportunity for visitors to see what the artists have been producing, take their cards, and make contact at a later date.
“I take out what I’ve been working on,” said Shaul Cohen, an industrial designer known for his 3D-printed miniature houses and whimsical products, as well as for 3D-printing thousands of yellow hostage ribbons since the first days of the war.
Cohen’s latest set of works recalls children’s fuse beads craft sets, magnified to create different images, including whimsical flamingos and mermaids.
Talia Luvaton, from a family of artists, was showing her fine leather-wrapped vases and a group of vases finely etched with designs by tattoo artists she collaborated with for Fresh Paint.
The stall next door to Luvaton was home to Guy Megides and her KipKop Art Studio, which creates clever digital and washable prints as placemats, bags and baskets, while across the way, ceramicist Avi Ben Shoshan displayed his contemporary Judaica and ceramic pieces, including a kiddush cup inspired by the ubiquitous Israeli water tower and plaques of the Hebrew alphabet.
Visitors milled around, crowding into the multiple galleries and taking food and drink breaks in the large open area behind the hangar, where local restaurants set up kiosks alongside a central bar.
Fresh Paint 2025 ends at 10 p.m. on Monday, May 26.
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