Yonatan
Kochva
MAS972

A multidisciplinary artist working at the intersection of street art, design, technology and urban culture.

Tel Aviv · Painting walls since 2001 · Graffiti · Industrial objects · Light & projection · Product design · Generative work

Statement

My work combines graffiti, industrial objects, lighting, video and projection installations, and asks how everyday materials from the urban environment can be given new meaning. I treat an industrial object as a three-dimensional canvas — a place where material, colour, light and movement meet.

My works explore the meeting between physical and digital space, between raw material and contemporary technology, and between street culture and the world of art and design. Through colour, cuts, lighting and projection I make visual experiences that give new life to familiar objects.

My language is colourful, direct and at times sarcastic. It uses humour and energy to spark curiosity. I want to make work that invites people to stop, look again at their surroundings, and find beauty in unexpected places.

הצהרת אמן

אני אמן רב־תחומי הפועל בצומת שבין אמנות רחוב, עיצוב, טכנולוגיה ותרבות אורבנית.

העשייה שלי משלבת גרפיטי, אובייקטים תעשייתיים, תאורה, וידאו ומיצבי הקרנה, ובוחנת כיצד ניתן לקחת חומרים וחפצים יומיומיים מהמרחב העירוני ולהעניק להם משמעות חדשה. אני מתייחס לאובייקטים תעשייתיים כאל קנבס תלת־ממדי — מקום שבו חומר, צבע, אור ותנועה נפגשים.

השפה האמנותית שלי היא צבעונית, ישירה ולעיתים סרקסטית, ומשלבת הומור, אנרגיה ודימויים שמעוררים סקרנות. אני שואף ליצור עבודות שמזמינות אנשים לעצור, להסתכל מחדש על הסביבה שלהם ולגלות יופי במקומות בלתי צפויים.

Legal precedent · 2023

Graffiti is a copyright-protected work — even on a public wall.

After his works were used commercially without permission, MAS972 brought a case that ran for six years. The Magistrate's Court ruled that street art is entitled to the same copyright protection as any other artwork, including when it is created and displayed in public space. The decision was covered widely and is considered a milestone for street art in Israel — establishing the artist working in public space not only as a maker, but as a figure in the legal and cultural argument about urban art.

Graffiti & urban work

Characters that make a stranger smile.

Commissioned murals across Israel and Europe, gallery work, painted objects and vehicles. Clean lines, a joyful and sarcastic register, and a street agenda: turn neglected structures into something worth looking at. First in Israel to build structured graffiti workshops, in 2001.

Installation

Industrial Resurrection

Five industrial metal barrels. Three shown finished — painted, cut, lit from within. The other two worked on live across the run of the exhibition, so the audience sees the transformation happen rather than only its result. Video and digital media are projected onto the barrels and into the room, so light and movement hold a conversation with the raw steel.

The work takes its cue from street culture and from the possibility of finding beauty and meaning in objects that were abandoned or lost their original purpose.

Collaboration

Urban Abstracts

A collaborative audiovisual installation with projection mapping by FLAYSH — industrial surfaces turned into immersive digital artworks, blending graffiti with projection mapping.

Proposal

LOOP · Continuous Disruption

Hand-drawn letterforms and characters are fed into generative systems; what comes back is re-processed and fed in again, indefinitely. An open studio as a live laboratory, with real-time projection and a documented archive of each pass. The project asks where artistic identity sits when a machine is a collaborator.

Product & industrial design

True Pulse

A performance-recovery device — control unit, electrode array and charging case. Product renders, exploded component layout, specification and comparison sheets, and the retail one-pagers.

Airfloat

A cooling ergonomic relief seat. Developed through to the commercial case: upgrade path from the previous generation, manufacturing and retail costing, margin structure and a development roadmap.

Past / Future Simplicity

A carved clock-lantern — angels, exposed gearing, hanging lamps — studied as a single object and placed through a range of contemporary interiors, from pale minimal rooms to dark luxury.

Worlds & animation

Outback Mayhem

An animated series in development. Character bibles, turnarounds, model sheets and props for a full ensemble — Steve, Joey, Chip, Ellie, Tina, Professor Oz, Sam and the rest — each specified down to height, wardrobe and behaviour.

Rat City

A generative-AI video comic with a developed world and cast — neon-lit, dystopian, scored with its own soundtrack. Around 270 stills and animation clips.

Bel Air Social Club

An adult animated comedy created with Eric Loch. Eight episodes written, a finished 17-minute pilot, a 63-page comic adaptation and a browser arcade. The voice cast was designed by the creators and generated with AI.

Trailer ▸Site ▸

Documentary

Home is where….

A photographic series made at night on the streets of Tel Aviv. Doorways, benches, bank lobbies, a green wall. Participants were paid.

Concepts & ventures

Mushroom Hunt

Solar-powered interactive light-and-sound installations that turn public gardens into playable space. Taken to investors and to grant application, with defined game modes.

Live ▸

Storyteller Inc

A platform combining generative AI with VR and AR to build living narrative worlds in real time — turning a prompt into somewhere you can stand.

Live ▸

MAS Graffiti School

Founder and head instructor. The first structured graffiti workshops in Israel, running since 2001.

EZXS Gallery

Founded, curated and ran an independent gallery for contemporary art and street culture, 2017–2018.

Massive Wear

An independent clothing label joining graffiti, urban identity and commercial visual language.

Chip! — Companion AI Device

A product concept for an interactive desk companion combining personality, communication and security.

Bamba Baby

A concept for a large-scale exhibition bringing street artists together with sculptural objects.

Doggy Style

A location-based social app for dog owners, with competitor mapping and a Tel Aviv market survey.

Music

MAS972

DJ sets and original productions since 2022, and a body of generative music work — including Strong Man Weed, one track rebuilt through roughly thirty genre and language variants, from gabber and hardstyle to ska, western and Arabic.

Selected exhibitions & events

  • PAINT N' BEERTel Aviv2013
  • BABUSHKA SHOWGroup exhibition2014–present
  • EZXS GALLERYTel Aviv2017–2018
  • The 7th Floor Graffiti ExpoTel Aviv Central Bus Station2013
  • MOS: Meeting of StylesPoland, Germany, Greece2012–2014
  • Artists 4 Israel2013–2015
  • South Wind Festival2013–2016
  • The Streets Are TalkingHolon Children's Museum2015
  • UpFestBristol, England2016, 2017
  • Pop Up MuseumTel Aviv2019
  • Loop Colors Graffiti JamIsrael2021
  • Petach Tikva Market Project2022

Press

Globes · Times of Israel · Ynet · Cool Hunting · Global Street Art · Artbeat · Megafon · Hadassah Magazine

Tools

MidjourneyRunwayElevenLabsLuma Dream MachineViduVozoVeo3ProcreateAbleton

Also

Curator of urban art exhibitions. Gallery-selling artist. Commissioned murals across Israel and Europe.