Exhibition dates: 2nd August – 19th October, 2009
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One of my favourite designers! Featuring all the works in the exhibition (under Works) and photographs and video of the installation for the works ‘Cages sans Frontieres’ (2009) (under The Show), there is a really amazing interactive website for this exhibition at
www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2009/ronarad/
and an interesting video of Ron Arad talking about his work at
www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/videos/56/391.
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Ron Arad
‘The Rover Chair’
1981
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Ron Arad
‘Concrete Stereo’
1983
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Ron Arad
‘Sketch for Well Tempered Chair’
1986
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Ron Arad
‘Well Tempered Chair’ Prototype
1986
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Ron Arad
‘Big Easy’
1988
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Ron Arad
‘Big Easy. Volume 2′
1988
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“The Museum of Modern Art presents ‘Ron Arad: No Discipline’, the first major U.S. retrospective of Arad’s work, from August 2 to October 19, 2009. Among the most influential designers of our time, Arad (British, b. Israel 1951) stands out for his adventurous approach to form, structure, technology, and materials in work that spans the disciplines of industrial design, sculpture, architecture, and mixed-medium installation. Arad’s relentless experimentation with materials of all kinds – from steel, aluminum, and bronze to thermoplastics, crystals, fiberoptics, and LEDs – and his radical reinterpretation of some of the most established archetypes in furniture – from armchairs and rocking chairs to desk lamps and chandeliers – have put him at the forefront of contemporary design.
The exhibition features approximately 140 works, including design objects and architectural models, and 60 videos. Most of the objects featured in the exhibition are displayed in a monumental Corten-and-stainless-steel structure specially designed by the artist called Cage sans Frontières (Cage without Borders). The structure measures 126.5 feet (38.5 meters) long, spanning the entire length of the Museum’s International Council gallery, and over 16 feet (5 meters) tall. The exhibition is organized by Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator, and Patricia Juncosa Vecchierini, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art.
Ms. Antonelli states: “Arad is well known for his iconoclastic disregard for disciplines – and, at least apparently, for discipline. He has defined much of the current panorama of design, inspiring a generation of practitioners who disregard established modes of practice in favor of mutant design careers that are flexible enough to encompass the range of contemporary design applications, from interactions and interfaces to furniture and shoes.”
Arad’s accomplishments over the past three decades have stirred up the design world by repeatedly updating the concept of the architect/designer/artist and repositioning design side by side with art, both in discourse and in the market – all while keeping one foot firmly in industrial production and large-scale distribution. Idiosyncratic and surprising, Arad’s designs communicate the joy of invention, pleasure, humor, and pride in the display of their technical and constructive skills.
This exhibition celebrates Arad’s spirit by combining industrial design, studio pieces, and architecture. It features Arad’s most celebrated historical pieces, including the Rover Chair (1981)[see above], the Concrete Stereo (1983) [see above], and the Bookworm bookshelves (1993) [see below], along with more recent products such as the PizzaKobra lamp (2008) [see below] and the latest reincarnation of his Volumes series (1998), the armchair duo titled Even the Odd Balls? (2009) [see below].
‘Cage sans Frontières’ was specially designed by Arad, developed with Michael Castellana from Ron Arad Associates, and manufactured and installed by Marzorati Ronchetti, Italy, under the direction of Roberto Travaglia. The structure is in the shape of a twisted loop and consists of 240 square cut-outs lined with stainless steel that act as shelves for the objects in the exhibition. The dramatic installation relies on the scale of the structure and on the reflectivity of the inner walls of the cut-outs which creates a ricocheting effect. One side of the structure is continually covered with grey gauze fabric that acts as a translucent, elastic membrane. The fabric was donated by the textile company Maharam and was cut and stitched by the jeans manufacturer Notify, which is also a sponsor of the exhibition. The structure was commissioned and lent to the exhibition by Singapore FreePort Pte Ltd, an arts storage facility.
Monitors installed in the structure and on the walls feature animations of the design and production process of some of the objects on view; animated renderings of architectural projects represented in the exhibition by models; and a video showing time-lapse footage of the construction of Cage sans Frontières. Other objects – including the Bookworm and This Mortal Coil bookshelves (both 1993) and the Shadow of Time clock (1986) – are installed along the perimeter of the gallery. Two of Arad’s sofas, Do-Lo-Res (2008) [see below] and Misfits (1993) [see below], are installed outside the exhibition entrance, and visitors are invited to sit on them …
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Ron Arad
‘Soft Big Easy’
1990
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Ron Arad
‘Large Bookworm’
Tempered sprung steel and patinated steel
1993
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Ron Arad
‘Misfits’
1993
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Ron Arad
‘D-Sofa’ Prototype
Patinated, painted, oxidized stainless steel and mild steel
1994
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Ron Arad
‘Uncut’
1997
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Ron Arad
‘FPE (Fantastic, Plastic, Elastic)’
Aluminum and injection-molded polypropylene plastic sheet
1997
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Ever since he founded his studio, together with long-time business partner Caroline Thorman, in 1981 (first called One Off, and then reestablished in 1989 as Ron Arad Associates), Arad has produced an outstanding array of innovative objects, from limited editions to unlimited series, from carbon fiber armchairs to polyurethane bottle racks. A designer and an architect, trained at the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem and at London’s Architectural Association School of Architecture, he has also designed memorable spaces – some plastic and tactile, others digital and ethereal – such as the lobby of the Tel Aviv Opera House (1994-98), Yohji Yamamoto’s showroom in Tokyo (2003), and the Holon Design Museum, Israel (nearing completion), all of which will be represented in the exhibition with models and videos. In his influential role as Head of the Design Products Masters’ Degree course at the Royal College of Art in London from 1997 until this year, he has nurtured several innovative designers, including Julia Lohmann, Paul Cocksedge, and Martino Gamper.
The 1981 Rover Chairs [see above], which launched Arad’s design career even though at the time he was not seeking any particular professional label, are emblematic of his early readymade creations. The chairs are made of discarded leather seats from the Rover V8 2L, a British car, anchored in tubular-steel frames using Kee Klamps, an inexpensive scaffolding system. Arad stopped making them once he realized that the overwhelming demand for the chairs was transforming his atelier into a dedicated Rover Chair manufacturer. The Italian company Moroso is about to produce an industrial version of the chair under the name Moreover.
The Concrete Stereo (1983) [see above] is another milestone in Arad’s work with readymades. It is very simply a hi-fi system – with turntable, amplifier, and speakers – cast in concrete. The concrete was then partially chipped away, exposing the steel armature, the electronic components, and the pebbles in the cement.
Objects in the exhibition are grouped as families whose common thread is the exploration, sometimes over years, of a form, a material, a technique, or a structural idea. An example is the investigation of elasticity and surprise that began with the Well Tempered Chair (1986) [see above] - a chair made of four sprung sheets of steel held together by wing nuts that come together to suggest the archetypical shape of an armchair. Another example is the Volumes series (1988), which comprises, among others, his renowned Big Easy (1988) [see above] and its various iterations, among them the Soft Big Easy (1990) [see above] and the painted-fiberglass New Orleans (1999) [see below].
Not Made by Hand, Not Made in China, another important family and a milestone in Arad’s career and in the history of design, is a series of limited-edition objects – vases, sculptures, lamps, and bowls – that Arad presented in 2000 at the annual Milan Furniture Fair. All the objects in the series were made using 3-D printing, which at that time was almost exclusively used to create one-off models for objects that would later be produced in series using traditional manufacturing processes. Treating rapid prototypes as final products rather than templates, Arad turned the new process into an advanced production method, a path that was subsequently followed by several designers.
A more recent family is the Bodyguards (2008) [see below], in which the same initial shape in blown aluminum is differently intersected by imaginary planes and cut to reveal ever-changing personalities, from a rocking chair to a stern bodyguard-like sculpture.
To give life to his ideas, Arad relies on the latitude provided by computers as much as on his own exquisite drafting skills, and he uses both the most advanced automated manufacturing techniques and the simple welding apparatuses in his collaborators’ metal workshops. Often, his work is a combination of high and low technologies, such as his Lolita chandelier (2004) [see below] for Swarovski. Made with 2,100 crystals and 1,050 white LEDs, the Lolita takes the shape of a flat ribbon wound into a corkscrew shape. The ribbon contains 31 processors that enable the display of text messages sent to the Lolita’s mobile phone number. For this exhibition, visitors can send texts to (917) 774-6264. The messages appear at the top of the chandelier and slowly wind down the ribbon’s curves, creating the impression that the chandelier is spinning ever so slightly.”
Press release from the MOMA website
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Ron Arad
‘New Orleans’
1999
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Ron Arad
‘Lolita Chandelier’
2004
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Ron Arad
‘Oh Void 2′ armchair
2004
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Ron Arad
‘Table Paved With Good Intentions’
2005
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Ron Arad
‘MT Rocker Chair’
2005
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Ron Arad
‘Southern Hemisphere’
Patinated aluminum
2007
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Ron Arad
‘Do-Lo-Res’
2008
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Ron Arad
‘PizzaKobra’ lamp
2008
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Ron Arad
‘Bodyguard’
2008
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Installation Photographs of the Exhibition
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Installation view of ‘Cage sans Frontières’ with ‘Even the Odd Balls?’ chairs (2009) and ‘Lolita Chandelier’ (2004)
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Ron Arad’s ‘Cage sans Frontières’ with two ‘Rolling Volume’ chairs (1989 and 1991), left, and two ‘Bodyguard’ chairs (2007)
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The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)
11, West Fifty-Third Street, New York
Opening hours:
Sunday, Tuesday – Thursday 10.30 – 5.30pm
Friday 10.30 – 8pm
Saturday 10.30 – 5.30pm
Closed Tuesday
Exhibition: ‘Intersections Intersected: The Photography of David Goldblatt’ at the New Museum, New York
Tags: David Goldblatt, Intersections Intersected: The Photography of David Goldblatt, Johannesburg from the Southwest 2003, Man with an injured arm 1972, Monuments celebrating the Republic of South Africa 1982, New Museum, New York, Pomfret Asbestos Mine, South Africa, Soweto, Wreath at the Berg-en-Dal Monument 1983
Exhibition dates: 15th July – 11th October, 2009
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David Goldblatt
‘A new shack under construction, Lenasia Extension 9, Gauteng’
1990
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David Goldblatt
‘Family at Lunch’
1962
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David Goldblatt
‘Incomplete houses, part of a stalled municipal development of 1000 houses. Lady Grey, Eastern Cape, 5 August 2006′
2006
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David Goldblatt
‘Monuments celebrating the Republic of South Africa (left and JG Strijdom, former prime minister (right), with the headquarters of Volkskas Bank, Pretoria. 25 April 1982′
Black and while photograph on matte paper
Courtesy the artist and Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg
1982
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“Over the last fifty years, David Goldblatt has documented the complexities and contradictions of South African society. His photographs capture the social and moral value systems that governed the tumultuous history of his country’s segregationist policies and continue to influence its changing political landscape. Goldblatt began photographing professionally in the early 1960s, focusing on the effects of the National Party’s legislation of apartheid. The son of Jewish Lithuanian parents who fled to South Africa to escape religious persecution, Goldblatt was forced into a peculiar situation, being at once a white man in a racially segregated society and a member of a religious minority with a sense of otherness. He used the camera to capture the true face of apartheid as his way of coping with horrifying realities and making his voice heard. Goldblatt did not try to capture iconic images, nor did he use the camera as a tool to entice revolution through propaganda. Instead, he reveals a much more complex portrait, including the intricacies and banalities of daily life in all aspects of society. Whether showing the plight of black communities, the culture of the Afrikaner nationalists, the comfort of white suburbanites, or the architectural landscape, Goldblatt’s photographs are an intimate portrayal of a culture plagued by injustice.
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David Goldblatt
‘Mofolo South, Soweto, September 1972′
1972
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David Goldblatt
‘Wreath at the Berg-en-Dal Monument which commemorates the courage – and the sarcophagus which holds the bones – of 60 men of the South African Republic Police, who died here 27 August 1900 in a critical battle of the Anglo-Boer War. Dalmanutha, Mpumalanga. December 1983.’
Courtesy the artist and Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg
1983
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In Goldblatt’s images we can see a universal sense of people’s aspirations, making do with their abnormal situation in as normal a way as possible. People go about their daily lives, trying to preserve a sense of decency amid terrible hardship. Goldblatt points out a connection between people (including himself) and the environment, and how the environment reflects the ideologies that built it. His photographs convey a sense of vulnerability as well as dignity. Goldblatt is very much a part of the culture that he is analyzing. Unlike the tradition of many documentary photographers who capture the “decisive moment,” Goldblatt’s interest lies in the routine existence of a particular time in history.
Goldblatt continues to explore the consciousness of South African society today. He looks at the condition of race relations after the end of apartheid while also tackling other contemporary issues, such as the influence of the AIDS epidemic and the excesses of consumption. For his “Intersections Intersected” series, Goldblatt looks at the relationship between the past and present by pairing his older black-and-white images with his more recent color work. Here we may notice photography’s unique association with time: how things were, how things are, and also that the effects of apartheid run deep. It will take much more time to heal the wounds of a society that was divided for so long. Yet, there is a possibility for hope, recognition of how much has changed politically in the time between the two images, and a potential optimism for the future. Goldblatt’s work is a dynamic and multilayered view of life in South Africa, and he continues to reveal that society’s progress and incongruities.”
Joseph Gergel, Curatorial Fellow
Text from the New Museum website
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David Goldblatt
‘The swimming bath rules at the rec, Cape Blue Asbestos Mine, Koegas, Northern Cape’
2002
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David Goldblatt
‘The mill, Pomfret Asbestos Mine, Pomfret, North-West Province, 20 December 2002′
2002
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David Goldblatt
‘Johannesburg from the Southwest’
2003
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David Goldblatt
‘Man with an injured arm. Hillbrow, Johannesburg, June, 1972′
Black and while photograph on matte paper
Courtesy the artist and Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg
1972
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Many thankx to the New Museum for allowing me to publish the three photographs ‘Monuments celebrating the Republic of South Africa’, ‘Wreath at the Berg-en-Dal Monument’ and ‘Man with an injured arm’.
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New Museum
235 Bowery
New York, NY 10002
212.219.1222
Opening hours:
Wednesday 12-6 PM
Thursday and Friday 12-9 PM
Saturday and Sunday 12-6 PM
Monday and Tuesday closed
New Museum website