Leave it to a bunch of crazy art students to point out how crazy or cool your life could - or should - be. Beneath their whacky dress codes - from ties and fedoras to bunny ears and beehive hairdos, and always the ubiqitious tats - you may never have guessed that some of these Jerusalem-trained artists actually have something interesting or innovative to say. Now on view through July 25th at the prestigious Bezalel Academy of Art and Design are the freshly-honed viewpoints of the 2008 graduating class.

 

Thursday night's opening event was wall-to-wall with art lovers, supporters, friends and confused folk, including me after seeing one young woman's video installation on "the enslavement of women in the sex trade" (swear to you). It was a triptych-like video set that showed a woman crawling in her wedding dress on her hands and knees after a plate of hummus, that was being pulled in front of her by a string. Oh, and the viewer "forced" the entire sequence by pushing the project with this large gilded knob. Yeah, it was neither new nor necessary.

 

But there were plenty of reasons why this event is looked at as a formidable turning point for Israel's art scene at large, and Jerusalem's in particular. For example, the Israel Museum's Real Time: Art in Israel exhibition, which focuses on highlights from the last decade in Israeli art, features several well-known Bezalel graduates currently making contemporary art headlines around the world, including Sigalit Landau.

 

The student exhibition is enormous, sprawling across seven floors, and it encompasses all the departments at Bezalel, including design, art, jewelry and fashion, ceramics and glass, new media, animation, photography and visual communications - which are all sorts of graphic artists (typography, illustration, etc). So to save you some time navigating all the nooks and crannies of the floors - some works are displayed literally in the loft space above the bathrooms - here are some Jerusalemite picks (listed in the same sequence as they appear at right). Keep them on your art radar (or rolodex) too, because we think they may be going places.

But you don't have to take our word for it: Visit the Bezalel show for yourselves and let Jerusalemite know what you liked or even disliked most. The Bezalel Graduates Exhibition, at the academy's Mt. Scopus building, runs through July 25, open from 10:00 to 21:00 on weekdays and Fridays until 15:00. Admission is free.