Street Art Flourishes on Tel Aviv Walls
Unlike other large cities around the globe, Tel Aviv chose to embrace the works of Klone and other graffiti street artists, giving them exposure at the city's leading museum.
A serious, bespectacled fellow has been wandering around the streets of Tel Aviv for a decade already, observing the walls, roofs, abandoned buildings and alleyways of the city. But unlike the flocks of contractors and real estate brokers who have been circulating the city streets in recent years looking for their next real estate project, this man is not equipped with a mobile phone or a list of addresses of houses to sell, restore, renovate or destroy. Instead, he is equipped with spray paint and a brush.
Real estate agents and our fellow called Klone share an interest in real estate. While real estate agents want to buy and sell in an era when the prices of apartments in Tel Aviv have skyrocketed, Klone does the opposite: the drawings he paints on buildings are not for sale, and they may be erased by municipal workers or buried under bulldozers carrying out demolition work. In fact, Klone’s art — like that of all street artists — is almost a spiritual enterprise.
