Yonatan Kochva
MAS972

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

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.

My language is colourful, direct and at times sarcastic. 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. אני מתייחס לאובייקטים תעשייתיים כאל קנבס תלת־ממדי — מקום שבו חומר, צבע, אור ותנועה נפגשים.

השפה האמנותית שלי היא צבעונית, ישירה ולעיתים סרקסטית. אני שואף ליצור עבודות שמזמינות אנשים לעצור ולהסתכל מחדש על הסביבה שלהם.

Legal precedent · Tel Aviv-Yafo Magistrate's Court · 9 December 2024

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

Kochva & Tabak v. Dahan Peretz (C.C. 39402-10-19). Filed in 2019 and decided five years later by Judge Ron Goldstein, the case asked directly whether the Copyright Act protects street art. It does. The court found infringement of both the economic and the moral right across a series of works — among them Owl with Hand and Panda — and awarded ₪75,000 to Yonatan Kochva and ₪55,000 to the widow of the late Damian Tabak, plus costs and fees.

Damian Tabak died of cancer at thirty-five while the case was pending; his widow continued it in his place. The artists were represented by Tony Greenman and Omer Halevi.

The judge closed by noting he had written the ruling in Kiryat Hamelacha, where the brutalist workshops of the 1960s serve as a canvas for the city's street art — a living urban museum.

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.

Ordered by what people actually responded to — ranked against engagement across 201 posts. The rats came first, and they still do.

Education

MAS Graffiti School

The first structured graffiti workshops in Israel, founded in 2001 and running ever since. Private lessons and group workshops, taught by MAS972 in partnership with ARTA Israel on Nachalat Binyamin in Tel Aviv, using Montana Gold and Montana Cans.

A session covers the spray itself — pressures, cap types, the different Montana ranges — then the techniques: silhouettes, drips, fades and effects. Everyone paints on a real wall. Groups run to about ten participants, from age twelve up. Beginners welcome; most people leave having finished a piece.

@masgraffitischool ▸Book a workshop ▸

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.

Urban Abstracts

A collaborative audiovisual installation with projection mapping by FLAYSH. Painted panels become screens: the graffiti stays where it is and the light moves across it, so the same surface reads differently second to second. Graffiti meeting projection mapping.

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. It asks where artistic identity sits when a machine is a collaborator.

Industrial Resurrection — status

The installation is built and specified; documentation photography is pending. Available to exhibit.

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.

Animation & worlds

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, a four-game browser arcade and a full merchandise line. The voice cast was designed by the creators and generated with AI.

Trailer ▸Site ▸

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 — 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 87 animation clips.

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 ▸

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.

App & product

Doggy Style

A location-based social app for dog owners — dog profiles, playdate matching, nearby parks, events and premium tiers. Designed end to end: onboarding, matching, maps, settings and paywall, alongside a full business case with funding allocation, revenue projections, market sizing and a competitor matrix.

Moving image

Video

Music videos built with generative tools, and documentation of the walls being painted. Full-length versions live on YouTube.

Music videos

Ring My Bell1:37 · AI-generated music video
That’s All FolksAI-generated music video
Desert PartyAI-generated music video
אתה שולח לי הודעה2:03 · AI-generated music video

Graffiti on film

Bel Air Social Club

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.

Press

Selected coverage

The copyright ruling

Profiles & features

Reference & collections

CV

Selected exhibitions & events

  • PAINT N' BEERTel Aviv2013
  • BABUSHKA SHOWGroup exhibition2014–present
  • EZXS GALLERYTel Aviv2017–2018
  • The 7th Floor Graffiti ExpoCentral Bus Station, Tel Aviv2013
  • 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
  • MisturaItaly

Tools

MidjourneyRunwayElevenLabsLumaViduVozoVeo3ProcreateAbleton

Also

Curator of urban art exhibitions. Gallery-selling artist. Commissioned murals across Israel and Europe. Founder of MAS Graffiti School, 2001.

Contact

Let's make something.

massivewear@gmail.com

+972 54 749 2111

Tel Aviv, Israel

Social

Projects online

© Yonatan Kochva / MAS972. Reproduction without permission is not permitted — a principle established in court.