Tamir Shefer’s art combines elements of pop art, of comic and prehistoric art. In alluding to industrialisation, modernity and
prehistoric times it is trans-temporal; in suggesting elements of Western society, the Moche, Maya, and the Solomon Islands it is trans-cultural. His art is witty, funny and rascally; it is soothing in its overwhelming richness. In exhibiting the exotic next to the familiar it is bewildering and enchanting, puzzling and fascinating. Above all, it is spirited, ingenious and auratically decorative.
Tamir Shefer’s pictures look at us at least with two eyes, sometimes with several hundreds. Exotic masked beings in the foreground beam us hypnotically into alien worlds that do not seem to know the laws of time and space. When looking at Shefer’s wooden box-pictures, for example, the nonsynchronous is as co-existent as it is re-arranged: industrial artefacts may cavort with the prehistoric, tentacular tubes may sprawl from a strange masked man who, again, is all eyes, looking straight ahead and to the side, while rolling over bones and skulls like a tank.
Biography
2010
Smart Design Award
2008
Member of the jury for selecting artwork for the
Tel-Aviv 100th anniversary celebrations
2007
Cumming Soon – Vitrina Gallery, Holon Institute of Technology, Israel
2007
“The City Mouse” Tamir Shefer – Art Work, Gallery on the Cliff, Natanya,Israel
2006
Tamir Shefer – Artwork, Sheraton Tower Hotel, TelAviv,Israel
2005 – 2006
High Touch – Herzliya, Israel
2005 – 2006
Tuli Balbuli – stage design
2004 – 2007
“Omanut La’am”, traveling exhibition
2004
Masks – Ashdod Art Museum, Ashdod, Israel
2004
City Mouse – Art Work, Gallery on the Cliff,Natanya,Israel
2004 – present
Zman Masa – Lev Leviev Foundation – education program for elementary schools
2004 – present
Lecturer in Interactive Design at BezalelAcademy of Art,Israel
2003
Ach-Ach Boom-Trach – stage and costume design for The Arab-Jewish Theatre in TelAviv,Israel
2003 – 2004
EL-AL –comic demonstrating on-fl ight stretching exercises
2002
Kent Explora – Digital Art, Kalesher Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
Here and Now –IsraelCenter for Digital Art,Holon,Israel
Video Zone – Israel Center for Digital Art, Holon, Israel
2002 – present
Lecturer in Visual Communication at H.I.T. (Holon Institute of Technology),Israel
2002 – 2004
The Hole – art group for experimental comics
2000 – 2002
Pif – design illustration for a variety of games for children
1997 – 2001
Head of Interactive Design Program at VitalSchoolofDesign, TelAviv,Israel
1996
Comics by the Bit – TheCartoonArt Museum,San Francisco, USA
1991
Founder and Editor of Ha’buha,Israel’s fi rst alternative comic art magazine
1989 – present
Design and Illustration Studio
1989
BA in Industrial Desgin
1985 – 1989
Studies Industrial Design atBezalelAcademyof Art
1963
born in San Francisco