User:Art Lover/My Sandbox/Klone (artist)

Klone is a street artist born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, who immigrated to Israel in 1994. Beginning at the age of 16, Klone has been one of Israel's first graffiti artists, and has developed his unique style, depicting warped human figures bordering on the seam line of animals. He has shown his works in galleries and museums around the world, including Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and his works are part of the collection of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

Career
Klone (the pseudo-name of the artist, adopted in 2004), was born in 1983 in Kharkiv, in the former USSR, to a family who immigrated to Israel in 1994. From a young age Klone exhibited talent for the arts. As an only child, Klone was often employing himself with drawings, imaginary maps that he created, and drew maps of his own self-created wonderlands. At the age of 16 he saw first images of graffiti art, and the following day encouraged a fellow classmate to go to the streets in Ramat Gan, where he resided then, where he sprayed his first pen-name as Rocket. Future pseudo-names included Make and Make-What, until the name Klone was adopted in 2004.

The character which first characterized Klone was of a faceless child, with eyes only, observing the viewer. Depicted with only few lines, the character was created following the artist's attempt to transform textual graffiti writings into a figurative symbol, similarly to to the process of street artists such as Kaws and D*Face.

Following the emergence of the boy-like character, the name Klone was adopted by the artist in order to shed light on the production procedure of the character, which mimicked cloning. The letter K was chosen to replace the C in the word, in order to both differentiate between the new pseudo-name and the common-used word, as well as symbolize the need of each individual person in modern-day society to find his own uniqueness.

Since then, Klone has developed several characters, all unique for their distinct contour-line. Such characters included the predators, half-human half-animals with long fangs. Beginning in 2008 Klone attended the Visual Arts Department at Shenkar College of Engineering and Design in Tel Aviv, where he studied art history, and furthered his knowledge of art history. He then quit the school after two years, due to a lack of interest in the formal art academy.

In 2011 Klone took part in a group exhibition at the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion of Contemporary Art at the [Tel Aviv Museum of Art]], where he painted the largest mural at the exhibition. Following the exhibition, Klone has began to show his work around the world. Today his works are part of the collection of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and in private collections.

Exhibitions
List will come here:

Swoon started doing large-scale installations in 2005.

In 2011, Swoon created a site-specific installation depicting the goddess in the atrium of the New Orleans Museum of Art.

In December 2011 Swoon held her first solo exhibition in London, England, filling the gallery at Black Rat Projects with sculptures and paper cuts.

Press

 * Barging In to Venice
 * NY Times Article
 * NY Times article
 * Interview with The Morning News
 * Sadie Magazine interview
 * Gammablog interview
 * KultureFlash interview
 * Rising Artist on Curbs and Stoops
 * October 10, 2008 "Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea", Scribe Media
 * November 2008, "A Two Way Street", ARTNEWS
 * Interview with The Huffington Post
 * video about Swoon's project Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea at Deitch Projects, New York. 2008
 * interview with Swoon about the Portrait of Silvia Elena at Honey Space, New York
 * Article and Interview in Time Out London, November 25, 2011

Appearances in other media

 * Swoon as herself, Exit Through the Gift Shop, Banksy, 2010
 * Swoon as herself, Our City Dreams, Chiara Clemente, 2009
 * Swoon as herself, Inside Outside, 2005
 * Swoon at Internet Movie Database