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Chaim Machlev (DotsToLines)

Geometric line and dot blackwork

DotsToLines, Berlin, Germany (and Los Angeles)

Chaim Machlev, working as DotsToLines, is an Israeli-born tattooer known for large-scale geometric blackwork built from black lines and dots that flow with the contours of the body.

Archive Note

Born November 7, 1980 in Tel Aviv, Machlev worked as a project manager in information technology before getting his first tattoo around age thirty, after which he left his corporate career and moved to Germany. He began tattooing in Berlin in 2012 and founded the DotsToLines studio in the Kreuzberg district, later adding a private studio in Los Angeles while keeping his Berlin base. His work is abstract rather than depictive, mapping flowing line-and-dot structures to anatomy and often treating the whole body as a single composition, with nature, mathematics, and sacred geometry as cited influences. In 2013 he won the TatowierMagazin newcomer contest, which brought him national attention, and his work has since been exhibited in museum contexts including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome and the Eretz Israel Museum. He works with one client per day.

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