Upcoming in the Timothy Tailor Gallery in London: Ron Arad’s Thumbprint Chair
Thumbprint 2008, Bronze
74 1/8 x 62 5/8 x 55 7/8 in. /152 x 159 x 142 cm
Edition 1 of 6
Tag: Ron Arad
Born in Tel Aviv in 1951, educated at the Jerusalem Academy of Art and later at the Architectural Association in London, Ron Arad co-founded with Caroline Thorman the design and production studio One Off in 1981 and later, in 1989, Ron Arad Associates architecture and design practice. In 2008 Ron Arad Architects was established alongside Ron Arad Associates.
From 1994 to 1999 he established the Ron Arad Studio, design and production unit in Como, Italy. He was Professor of Design Product at the Royal College of Art in London up until 2009. he was awarded the 2011 London Design Week Medal for design excellence and was became a Royal Academician of the Royal Academy of Arts in 2013.
His constant experimentation with the possibilities of materials such as steel, aluminum or polyamide and his radical re-conception of the form and structure of furniture has put him at the forefront of contemporary design and architecture.
Alongside his limited edition studio work, Arad designs for many leading international companies including Kartell, Vitra, Moroso, Fiam, Driade, Alessi, Cappellini, Cassina, WMF and Magis among many others.
Ron Arad has designed a number of Public Art pieces, most recently the Vortext in Seoul, Korea, and the Kesher Sculpture at Tel Aviv University.
Source: Biography
Puch stool by Ron Arad
Puch stool by Ron Arad
For the non European readers: Puch is an Austrian manufacturer of all sorts of movable things as cars, tanks, motorbikes and mopeds. In my youth in The Hague you didn’t belong if you didn’t drive a
“Puch Moped”
Actually this
photo from Brom Brom
is better (if you click the enlarged version you will see a Stork on the T-shirt which means it is probably a T-shirt issued by the The Hague Puch club chapter….)
RON ARAD
Puch stool, ca. 1981
Chrome-plated tubular steel, moped seat. 32 1/2 in. (82.6 cm.) high Manufactured by One Off Ltd., UK. Back of seat printed with PUCH.
ESTIMATE $8,000-10,000LITERATURE Yukio Futagawa, Sticks and Stones. One Offs & Short Runs. Ron Arad 1980-1990, exh. cat., Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, 1990, pp. 38-39; Deyan Sudjic, Ron Arad, London, 1999, pp. 20 and 100-101
Rover Two-Seater Sofa and Lounge Chair by Ron Arad
Rover two-seater sofa and Rover lounge chair by Ron Arad, 1981
Painted tubular steel, Rover car seats. Sofa: 31 1/2 x 48 x 36 in. (80 x 121.9 x 91.4 cm.); chair: 30 in. (76.2 cm.) high Manufactured by One Off Ltd., UK. Underside of each with decal “ONE/Off/LONDON/ 01 379 7796†(2).
ESTIMATE $15,000-20,000LITERATURE Deyan Sudjic, Ron Arad: Restless Furniture, New York, 1989, pp. 30 and 82 for the sofa; Charlotte and Peter Fiell, Modern Chairs, Cologne, 1993, p. 116; Charlotte and Peter Fiell, 1000 Chairs, Cologne, 1997, p. 562 for the chair; Deyan Sudjic, Ron Arad, London, 1999, p. 10 for the chair
Wild Crow Chaise by Ron Arad
Wild Crow Chaise by Ron Arad
RON ARAD
Unique and important Wild Crow chaise, ca. 1990
Mirror-polished stainless steel, patinated mild steel. 63 x 45 x 27 1/4 in. (160 x 114.3 x 69.2 cm.) Produced by One Off Ltd., UK.
ESTIMATE $160,000-180,000LITERATURE Deyan Sudjic, Ron Arad: Restless Furniture, New York, 1989, p. 58 for a similar example; Yukio Futagawa, Sticks and Stones. One Offs & Short Runs. Ron Arad 1980-1990, exh. cat., Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, 1990, p. 120-121 for “Wild Crow 2”
Ron Arad at Friedman Benda
Ron Arad seems to start a world tour at Friedman Benda in NYC.
From the press release:
GUARDED THOUGHTS
New Work by Ron Arad
November 7- December 20, 2008
Friedman Benda GalleryNEW YORK
On November 7, Friedman Benda at 515 West 26th Street, will unveil the new work of Ron Arad. This new body of work, the artist’s most ambitious to date, propels Arad into previously unexplored sculptural dimension.
In a departure both in scale and material sophistication, the artist uses his signature vocabulary of volumetric forms to unexpected and mesmerizing visual effect. Ron Arad has commanded a unique and prolific role in the art, architectural, and design spheres for 30 years. His ever-evolving body of work reflects Arad’s ability to innovate with cutting-edge technology, while perfecting the ideals and techniques of hands-on craftsmanship. With this inspiration, he continues to provoke the proscribed limits of his materials by giving formal expression to his seemingly unbuildable ideas.
The artist continues to interpret and engineer the values of sculpture and seating. The new pieces shift, unravel, and tempt balance, posing challenging visual and material polemics. In Afterthought, a monumental mirror-polished aluminum quadrangle is torqued and cantilevered, while supporting a recessed seating cavity that morphs or disappears from varying standpoints. With melding
reflective surfaces, the piece captures, holds and alters perceptions of light and movement in constant dynamic flow. With Southern Hemisphere, a massive, upright arc of patinated steel is weighted so that at rest it stands upright. Bearing a person’s weight, the piece may twist and rock, rendering it both stable and precarious.The scope of Aradâ’s career to date will be given full exposure in a major retrospective opening at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris on November 18th, 2008, subsequently traveling to The Museum of Modern Art in NY in June 2009 and The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 2010. A group of important
related works by Arad will be shown in a public exhibition at The Lever House in NY starting early December 2008.Arad’s work is widely recognized and collected among private collectors and major institutions worldwide. In America, museums that have acquired his work include the High Museum, Atlanta; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; The St. Louis Museum of Fine Art; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In Europe, the Vitra Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Fond National d’Art Contemporain, Paris; The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester; Design Museum,
London; Design Museum, Ghent; Triennale Collection, Milan; Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art, Amsterdam; In Asia, the Design Museum, Osaka.Active in London for over three decades, Ron Arad was born in Tel Aviv in 1951.After studying at the Jerusalem Academy of Art, Arad moved to London to study at the Architectural Association in 1974 under Peter Cook and Bernard Tschumi.
In 1981, he established One-Off Ltd., a design studio and showroom in Covent Garden where many of his early iconic conceptual and experimental works were created including the Rover Chair and the tempered steel Bookworm. By 1989, Ron Arad Associates was formed. Arad inspires and trains new generations of designers. He was a Professor of Design at the Hochschule in Vienna from 1994 to 1997. He is currently head of the Design Products Department at the Royal College of Art in London. An innovator of unparalleled breadth in industrial design, firms worldwide have produced Arad’s ground-breaking ideas, including Kartell, Vitra, Moroso, Alessi, Flos, Cappellini. His architectural projects include Yohji Yamamoto’s flagship store in Tokyo; the Maserati Headquarters Showroom
in Italy; the Foyer for the Opera house in Tel Aviv; the suite of dining rooms for Sheikh Saud Al-Thani’s Villa in Qatar; the Selfridges Technology Hall in London.He is currently building the Holon Design Museum in Israel and private residences internationally, including projects in Russia, Morocco and France.