EDGAR RAFAEL
Edgar Rafael is a self-proclaimed punk. He was born in Russia in 1990 and immigrated to Israel with his parents in 1993.
Rafael was arrested for graffiti tagging as a teenager, claiming that he just fell in love with the large-scale canvasses in the streets, also known as 'walls'. He began practicing street art at the age of 13 years old, painting everything from billboards to dumpsters in the urban landscapes of the city Ashdod, where he grew up.
In 2011, Rafael joined an architecture school. There, he began incorporating geometrical structures in his work, portraying historical icons with his unique techniques.
Just before his final exams, Rafael resigned from architecture school and to persuade a full-time career as an artist, working his magic on the streets of Tel Aviv.
When he was only 23 years old, with little money enough just to cover the price of his flight tickets, Rafael traveled to Los Angeles, California, where he had learned to work with a wide range of mediums and techniques inspired by the local art scene. Rafael's career had taken a big step after Israeli singer and musician Rotem Cohen commissioned work for his tour.
A fan of Rotem Cohen fell in love with Edgar's style, leading Rafael to get his first mural commission in a luxurious villa, where he painted a continuously large work through the entirety of the villa's walls with the face of Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe using tiny geometrical structures. This job had turned out to be the most significant of Rafael's works. After finishing it, he started getting more and more commissions from high-profile clients and art collectors.
Following that commission, Rafael had accomplished four major Solo exhibitions.
Rafael's work is effortlessly sassy and bold. His artistic style is rich with tastes of nostalgia, following his childhood heroes, comics book, cartoons, and video games. His unique approach, developed from pop art futurism and cubism, is often apparent with bright colors and iconic characters.
Edgar's large-scale mural work features a geometrical aesthetic, a visual collage of pop imagery mixed with his unique personal style portraiture, all executed with mixed media mediums. His works feature freehand spray paint, acrylic paint, oil pastels, markers, art glitter, and art resin working on a colossal scale. Rafael now focuses on his fine art and large-scale murals full-time. These murals can be found in dozens of houses across the globe, from Belarus to Canada, Israel, Paris, Los Angeles, Belgium, and more.
One of his major projects was designing a mural on seven-story shared open space and offices buildings by Be All. This project was characterized by over one hundred original handmade wall murals.
One other famous mural of his was a collaboration with Brown Hotel TLV and the Ministry of Tel Aviv. It was a lifeguard house at the iconic Tel Aviv Frishman Beach. Rafael was asked to paint over the lifeguard's cabin. It was the first lifeguard cabin turned into a luxurious pop-up hotel.
The Mayor of Tel Aviv said about that mural that he considers the lifeguard cabin a symbol of the city that has to remain as it is, and souls not to be painted over. The mural was planned to be temporary but soon became a driving force in the world of graffiti murals in different businesses, such as high-tech offices, restaurants, bars, and clubs in Israel.
Rafael's pieces have been showcased in high-profile companies and private collectors' homes. His most recent series was showcased in a luxurious villa in Tel Aviv. His clientele is diverse and spans across the globe.
Edgar Rafael is currently working on his next exhibition dealing with his childhood heroes and muses by combining Disney and Looney Tunes characters with geometrical portraits of pop-culture icons such as Pablo Picasso, Muhammad Ali, Michael Jackson, Tony Soprano, and many others. This work is executed on largescale mediums, growing bigger and bigger with each work.
If you see Rafael's work, you can't tell if whether it's computer work incorporating high-end stickers of our favorite childhood heroes or a handmade creation. Rafael's pieces reflect our relationships with iconic historical figures.