At an exhibition of LaCulture in Tel Aviv, 2024. © Szymon Makuch

ITAY, TELL ME ABOUT YOUR ARTISTIC PRACTICE.
I am a graphic designer by training and studies. I received my bachelor’s degree in visual communication at Shenkar College in Ramat-Gan, Israel, and after graduation, I started specialising in branding. After working for an agency for six months, I began freelancing and mainly doing branding projects. For my master’s degree in visual communication, I studied at ZHdK and started working for Z-Kubator as a curator and occasionally as jury member. I have always had an interest in curating. The goal of my work has always been to bring communities together by connecting them to the makers. Back in Tel Aviv in 2013, I first started exploring this with my project LaCulture.

WHAT IS LACULTURE?
LaCulture is a project I started that puts design into an exhibition setting. It started with my thoughts on the lack of accessibility of design. I believe design is not as accessible in public spaces as art is nowadays. Even though visual communication has become something that everybody understands to a certain degree, the space to talk about colours, logos, compositions and typographies is not so readily available yet. I realised that there is an untapped interest that people might like to see in the design world. 

I then went to local youth centres in Tel Aviv and explained to them my concept for a design exhibition that aims to make design more accessible as well as affordable to the public. They agreed and provided a lovely space that included a café and a generous socialising space. This was 12 years ago, and we are still organising multiple exhibitions every year.

HOW HAVE YOU LEARNED THAT THE DESIGN WORLD IS CHANGING, AND NEW NEEDS ARE EMERGING?
Through my work, I have noticed that people have changed the way they interact with art. We are more often looking into buying art that is affordable and that evokes an emotional response. We are no longer art collectors who invest in big time artworks and artists for profit. We buy because we want to hang it on our living room wall. I think this is the purest form of appreciating art.

I also see how curating is becoming a big part of a designer’s work. We as designers curate content on the daily. We run blogs, we are active on social media, we design book layouts. It is a less academic approach to curation as it is also based on a lot of self-taught skills. However, design can’t exist without curation and curation can’t exist without design. There needs to be a connect between the two. This is something the art industry is slowly realising, and we are working on breaking down the barriers between the two. 

WHEN YOU CAME TO ZURICH TO DO YOUR MASTER’S DEGREE, WHAT WAS YOUR FOCUS?
Exactly that! I wrote my master’s thesis on this new field of visual communication curating that arose in the past few years. In my paper, I give this field a name: the Formatorial. The word combines “format” with “curatorial”. Designers create formats. If a client needs a book, poster, website – whatever it may be – we need to curate it. Formats are our playground and the curatorial is the idea of why art should happen in this moment, in this way. Some have also coined it “cultural design”.

NewKammer Exhibition in Atelier Righini Fries, curated by Itay Blaish, 2024. © Marcel Rickli

YOU MENTIONED THAT YOU ALSO WORK FOR Z-KUBATOR. WHAT PROJECTS DO YOU LEAD?
Firstly, I occasionally participate in jury meetings to review applications for What’s next_Compass. We offer an amazing post-graduate programme where participants can attend workshops, profit from individual coaching, and make use of a big studio space. I had also participated back in 2021/22. So, when we decide on our participants, we really try to figure out what the person needs from us to get to the next step. We do not expect any kind of output from them during that time. We are merely there to support them so they can succeed whichever way they wish to succeed.

I also curate the Open Studio Night, which just took place a week ago. Here, the What’s next_Compass participants show visitors and interested folks around their studios and tell them more about their artistic practice. It’s always very insightful and impressive to see what the artists are up to.

Lastly, I came up with the concept and curated the biennial exhibition of our What’s next_Compass graduates, NewKammer. Last year, the very first exhibition took place in the Atelier Righini-Fries, a foundation that presents temporary exhibitions. The studio is in a beautiful, old house in the heart of Zurich with a lush, carefully tended to garden. The name “NewKammer” combines “Newcomer” and “Wunderkammer”. Since we present fresh, new artists, the first part of the name is self-explanatory. We fused the word with “Wunderkammer”, because there is something so wonderful about the studio space. The dichotomy between the new and upcoming artists showing one of their works and the old house is truly special. Since we only give glimpses into the vastly diverse works of the artists, it leaves the visitors to want to explore more. With this project, I can really live out my inner curator.

ASIDE FROM ZURICH AND TEL AVIV, WHERE ELSE DOES YOUR WORK TAKE YOU?
Next to LaCulture and various other projects in Tel Aviv, I also work in London, Krakow, New York and Berlin on projects mostly focused on branding. In Krakow, I do curatorial work. A few years ago, I designed for the Krakow Art Salon, a project that gives the public an opportunity to interact with local artists and their work. I did the initial design and concept and helped develop their visual communication. Krakow has been very enriching for me, as they have a very flourishing underground art scene.

WHAT’S NEXT?
Last year in December, I started a new project in Tel Aviv called Poster Club. It’s a project I want to bring to Zurich. The idea of Poster Club is to bring graphic designers and the public closer together. In our first exhibition in Tel Aviv, we presented 40 posters – which were also for sale – of 40 renowned designers. 

Zurich is the city of graphic design, and we want to find a way to make it more accessible. Poster design is like a craft in Switzerland. It’s almost like being a carpenter. And since Switzerland likes to treat graphic design like a craft more than an art form, I feel we need to open our doors and celebrate designers, graphic artists and illustrators more than we have. 

Itay Blaish’s studio space, 2024. © Andras Szamek

FURTHER LINKS

– Poster Club 2024