A young designer among the 22 finalists selected by the EdRC out of the 165 artists who sent in their works, Avraham Cornfeld shared how his scribe father inspired him to explore the way in which a black stain can become a Hebrew letter. The visual language used in the exhibition was created by Noa Schwartz.
The fonts need to relate to one another to create an almost-living system, Kaplan points out. Once they are released to the world, we rarely notice them. Their impact on everything we read, from billboards to government forms and art books is immense. While the public is invited to leaf through the printed works collected here, including the huge tome which tells the history of The Red House – Lodzia House designed by Keren and Golan Gafni to serve as a history of the famous Polish-Israeli textile factory, Kaplan jokes she hopes nobody would love the books so much as to be tempted to take them with them.
The exhibition is an odd mix of what one may, or may not, do. One may open a delicate paper construction to view the photographs inside, an original art catalogue created by Michael Gordon. One may not pick up a plate to inspect its bottom because it was glued to the stand to prevent it from falling and breaking should people bump into it. It is possible to touch the fabric of the shirts created by Danielle Weinberg.
For myself, the exhibition was a rare chance to examine Zero Zero by Dan Ozeri, his stunning graduation project that juxtaposes political violence with stadium soccer and the portraits of political leaders with quotes lifted from the world of sports to amazing results. By bringing all these different items into one space, EdRC, in a sense, grants us the chance to visit 22 studios at once.
There were four awards given in 2020 for Visual Communication Design, two are meant to encourage a young designer and are NIS 45,000 each and two are for established artists and are NIS 90,000 each. The awards were given last year but the exhibition had been postponed due to COVID-19. This year awards will be given for Industrial Design and the 2022 awards will be for Textile and Fashion. In addition to Iontef, the other winners in 2020 were Guy Sagee, Ayal Zakin and Dar Laor.
MANAGING DIRECTOR of the Edmond de Rothschild Foundation Israel Tal Sagi Faran told me – thanks to the generous support of Baroness Ariane de Rothschild – the foundation is active in roughly 40 education and social programs in all parts of the country across the board, from helping young women at risk to nurturing the next generation of Israeli leaders.
As she explained, this foundation is one of the few which offers training and tools to young artists and designers who might have great promise, yet are not yet established in their respective fields and may not yet know what their next step after college might be. These intense workshops can powerfully impact, even shape, the careers of up-and-coming talents. These awards, for instance, were innovations by the baroness with the intention to encourage Israeli art and help bring it to the forefront.
Unlike other art spaces, the EdRC pays artists and curators for their work and Faran hopes that the planned workshops, discussions, and exhibitions would make it into an open house for Israeli art in what is hoped to be post-COVID-19 times.
Wearing one of her own designs, a shirt that says Home is a State of Mind, Danielle Weinberg from Sorry Design described how she discovered the world of fashion after studying visual communication.
“I worked with some big clients and wanted to have my own voice,” she told The Jerusalem Post, “to use fashion to tell a story.”
“For me,” she says, “it is a message of courage and exposure and daring to speak about emotions; to charge the person with messages and feelings.”
One of her shirts contains the word Sorry in Arabic. “My boldest shirt is the one in Arabic and it has a dual meaning because it is not clear who is the person saying sorry here,” she pointed out. All of her works are individual, no two shirts are exactly the same. Unlike most exhibition items, a visitor to Not Just Print would be able to buy a shirt from her site if they like.
I notice with joy – in an exhibition of highly creative people – Keren and Golan Gafni chose to write a text different than the rest and dared to include an emoji. Instead of a biography and their respective visions, they wrote seven sentences about their work ending with “Yes, we are a couple, and we manage to work together:)”
Not Just Print will be shown at the Edmond de Rothschild Center (EdRC) at 104 Rothschild Blvd Tel Aviv on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. and on Fridays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The exhibition is admission-free and will be shown until August 3. The designers included are Yanek Iontef, Guy Sagee, Hila Ben Navat, Michael Gordon, Keren & Golan Gafni, Lahav Halevi, Ada Wardi, Koby Levy, Rutu Modan, Michal Sahar, Nadav Shalev, Ayal Zakin, Dar Laor, Tali Liberman, Jonathan Lax - YONIL, Dan Ozeri, Idan Am-Shalem, Avraham Cornfeld, Yael Hanna Bodasher, Dana Gez & Nomi Geiger and Danielle Weinberg.
The EdRC site is https://edrcenter.com/en/homepage/ Fashion by Danielle Weinberg can be bought here: https://sorrydesign.com/