T
he debut of the Danieli Art World Festival in May
heralded a new arts district in West Palm Beach, one
that had been quietly building on Railroad Avenue
for a few years. Like Miami’s Wynwood, there are large
warehouses painted with gorgeous street art surrounding
a courtyard. The street murals feature Salvador Dali’s face
painted by Christian Volckman and Raphael Thierry, and a
huge decorous shark mural called El Tiburon by Iena Cruz.
Inside the complex there’s a courtyard filled with giant
robot sculptures made from car and truck parts, shipping
containers stacked and painted with gorgeous murals and
mosaics. Exotic cars, Lamborghinis and Rolls Royces and a
silver Bentley are casually parked on the astroturf painted
to resemble a football field. A building designed to be a
European style bar restaurant, a 2 story office building that
houses a recording and TV studio, as well as a private
museum also surround the space. All this is the collection
and brainchild of the owner Danieli Bouaziz.
Danieli is an art world character, this larger than life
collector from Tel Aviv is also a famed opera singer who has
performed worldwide. He speaks 11 languages and has
been collecting art for decades with a deadly eye for quality.
He landed in Palm Beach County several years ago, bought
a house in Palm Beach and joined Mar A Lago to meet his
neighbors.
He began looking for a space to house his collection but
found Palm Beach island didn’t have the size of facility he
was looking for and the prices were daunting for what was
available. Someone told him of a warehouse complex by
the train tracks in downtown West Palm and he promptly
purchased it and set about creating his own art world by
hiring artists to transform the complex into his vision.
Collector-dealer Daniel Bouaziz rolled out a new art
festival in West Palm Beach at 925 N. Railroad
Avenue last March. The three days festival was
buzzing with activity in its inaugural year amidst
tiles fixed to a courtyard wall and abstract mosaic
designs all over. Artists decorated about 20 shipping
containers installed on nearby vacant lots.
After a series of private events and artist residencies he
hosted the first three day Spring Art Festival in the street in
front of the complex, curated by Rolando Chang Barrero of
The Box Gallery along with Paul Fisher Gallery.
At the festival there were customized shipping containers
designed by individual artists, some had wildly imaginative
flooring and lighting. Some cut out shapes in the sides of
the 3-ton containers, while others had sculptures and
outside murals on them. Food trucks lined the street and
live music played from a stage set up underneath the
overpass. There were blowup art balloons and a bar in a
tiki hut in the courtyard. Golf carts zipped back and forth
all weekend, ferrying guests and artists from one end of the
multi block fest to the other. The Mayor Jeri Muoio showed
up both in person at the opening night black tie gala and on
a mural in the courtyard.
wpbmagazine . com
The festival was a success, and as West Palm
Beach Mayor Jeri Muoio had anticipated: “To have
a private gallery owner put on a festival open to the
public is absolutely wonderful!”
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j u ly t h r u s e p t e m b e r
2017