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Friday Five with David Keller

David Keller is a young Israeli designer who lives and works in Jerusalem. He is currently in his second year at the M.des program in design at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and he works in the dVision internship program, a two year program with the Israeli plastic manufacturer KETER. In the last year, David has shown his work at the PARADIGMA gallery in Tel Aviv, and the Farm Gallery and the Mishkan Gallery in Holon. His main project was the Time 02 design expo curated by Tal Gur — the main event of the first ever Jerusalem design week last November — for which he was the initiator. He is currently thinking about Time 02.1 with the hopes that the next one will be even better than the first.

I’ve chosen to five Israeli projects that in my opinion emphasize the great skill, talent and imagination that can be found here, despite the complicated situation that we all live in.

1. Lightstone by Ori Yekutiel
This amazing piece is actually made of a revolutionary stone-based material that was discovered and developed by Ori. Ori has baked this extraordinary material inside a ceramic fabric pattern and created this amazing and expressive stool. The project can be seen at the design museum in Holon during the “post fossil” exhibition that is curated by Li Edelkourt and in Milan during the 2011 design week.

2. Rings by Adi Zaffran Weisler
Those jewels are a collection of hand-made pieces, made from used bullets and bullet parts. I love the raw aesthetics of this collection, the rough forms and the great and powerful concept behind the project. Adi says that “the rings that were created remove the bullet from its original function and they surprisingly turn into a bejeweled object and emphasize the beauty and aesthetics of the bullet when it is distanced from its surroundings.”

3. The Muslala project
Muslala is an amazing social-artistic project that takes place in Jerusalem. This great initiative was founded by the artist Matan Israeli which says at the organization website that: “Muslala is an artistic intervention in the area of Musrara, Jerusalem (Morasha in Hebrew). A proposal for an-urban journey between gardens to alleyways and walls, through works of art located at various points, corresponding with a violent history that has left scares on the surface, struggles that can be still felt, all covered with the ancient magical atmosphere and stones of Jerusalem. Variety of distractions, unexpected encounters and surprising reality turn such roaming into a one-time experience. Muslala invites artists from all shades of artistic practice to contact us for any possible cooperation (installations, collaborations and activities in the urban space). We are eager to have as many forces and idea joining our vision.” Pictured above is a work  by Asaf Mann.

4. D36 by Osnat Raichman
This work that has one the first price at the Time 02 exhibition in Jerusalem is an amazing piece of craft and design. The craft qualities of the project are amazing and the gold plating that covers the ceramic bulldozers is disgusting and desirable at the same time. I really admire this unique piece.

5. Raymond by David Amar
David Amar created this table as a tribute to Oulipo founder Raymond Queneau — made of recycled wood planks and cast aluminum legs, resembling clamps that allow the object to be adjusted in innumerable variations, but which also restrict and limit it. “I created a simple system of connectors,” he says, “that make it possible to create an object in different ways, a kind of ‘object writing’ method that resembles the way in which you change the position of a word in the sentence, and consequently its meaning”.

Jaime Derringer, Founder + Executive Editor of Design Milk, is a Jersey girl living in SoCal. She dreams about funky, artistic jewelry + having enough free time to enjoy some of her favorite things—running, reading, making music, and drawing.