AVNER SHER: EMBRACING VANDALISM

Avner Sher (born 1951, Israel), one of Israel's most successful commercial architects, has earned his B. Arch, Architecture and Town Planning from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology and graduated his Art studies at Haifa University.

- Mark Westall

During the early years of his career, sher's style was mainly inspired by an urban and architectural aesthetic. An encounter with graffiti and vandalism on a public restroom wall sparked the birth of a new artistic form of creation.

Sher embraced the vandalistic act's raw and violent nature and utilized it to create a new style. His work results from a very physically demanding process of injuring, scratching, etching, engraving, and scorching large cork and wood panels.

In 1999, Sher moved to Tel Aviv and had an experience that changed his life: He stopped at a gas station near Beit Yanai and saw that the restroom walls were covered with graffiti. Captivated by the wildness and artistic freedom they conveyed, he felt the urge to tear down barriers in his own work.

He began to paint and draw on cork panels mounted on wood, lacerating the surface with knives, screwdrivers, and electric saws, burning it with a wood-burning etching pencil and splattering it with substances like coffee, mud, ketchup, and red wine. His work is also rooted in the iconography of the Levant.