Milan12: Design Bonanza, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design

Following on from last year’s successful visit to Milan, the Industrial Design Department of Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem returns to Ventura Lambrate with an exhibition entitled Design Bonanza.

The exhibition includes work by 45 students and recent graduates and is curated by Prof. Ezri Tarazi, head of the Master of Design (M.Des) programme, Haim Parnas, head of the Bachelor of Design programme and Galit Shvo, About Design Academic coordinator, M.Des programme. The curators explain that Design Bonanza ‘expresses the experimental spirit of Bezalel as well as the creative research, which encourages the students to doubt and look for that which is new in the material, shape and idea, as tools for continued examination of the field of design.’

There is an emphasis on problem-solving, producing experimental designs that have practical uses. Some students are looking at the historic traditional methods and updating them, such as Shy Bernstein’s Blitz.k11 table that casts brass into tree trunks and Itamar Foguel’s Glass Knives for the Post-Modern Neanderthal, in which ‘rock and glass are broken into blades in a traditional manner, as was done by prehistoric man, and are then connected with modern processing technologies of metal and glass.’

Others are all about the latest technology, such as WOO, the result of a project that saw students of the Future Lab Masters course collaborating with General Motors. WOO transforms car windows into interactive displays to create an enriched experience for backseat passengers.

Vilhelmina Sokol’s prosthetic arm is made from porcelain and is inspired by Israeli biologist Amotz Zahavi’s handicap principle which suggests that extravagant gestures in nature, such as the male peacock’s tail, are a form of conspicuous consumption. Thus the porcelain arm is fragile and elegant, but a survivor.

Lee Rosman’s project Frozen started as an experiemnt in materials, during which Lee examined the various results received from mixing iron powder with various casting materials. The castings were done on magnetic forms, which pull the iron and ‘freeze’ it into these wild shapes.

Needle and Thread by Hadas Ilani began life as a challenge to look at local materials, looking at various ways of turning pine needles into shoes. Hadas has created a footwear collection that examines the possibilities of pine needles as a raw material, with references to traditional pine needle mats.

Preserved by Baruch Mogilevsky revisits the use of salt as a preservative. Meat is dried and preserved between salt crystals and pressed into a hard block of salt that can keep the meat edible for many years.

Noa Zilberman’s Wrinkles – Self Portrait is a series of jewellery pieces that map Noa’s future wrinkles in gold. ‘Necklace for the neck, tiara for the forehead, eye jewellery and cleavage jewellery, transforming into a fashion accessory that which is meant to beautify, emphasising the flaw and celebrating its existence.’

The curators continue: ‘Design Bonanza presents the designer’s digging tools as a process of searching for a path between junctions: margins and centre, old and new. The metaphoric expression of the process is presented here using three essences: dirt, dust and gold. The first represents the period of the search, the second the moment of explosion and discovery, and the third, the catharsis process of the discovery, when it transforms into a pure and refined idea.

‘The ‘Gold Rush’ of the early 20th Century is replaced at the beginning of the 21st Century with a new “Gold Rush”, which emanates from the beginning of the decline of the modern financial and social system. However, the real “gold” is in the free imagination, the aspirations and the exposed, albeit filled with emotion, perspective of new creators. The hidden dreams in Design Bonanza try to illustrate the urge, discovery and future products of young designers in Israel.’

Design Bonanza by Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design takes place at Ventura Lambrate, Via Massimiano 6, 20134 Milan from April 17-22 2012.