October 4th, 2009 Share
Ron Arad at the MoMA
Ron Arad stands out among the most influential designers of our time for his daredevil approach to form, structure, technology, and materials in work that spans the disciplines of industrial design, sculpture, architecture, and mixed-medium installation. Arad was born in Tel Aviv in 1951 and studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. In 1973 he moved to London, where he attended the Architectural Association School of Architecture, and in 1981, together with long-time business partner Caroline Thorman, he opened One Off, a gallery-studio for experimental design that showed not only his work but also that of fellow freethinkers such as Danny Lane and Tom Dixon. Since then, the name and address of the office and the scale of its work have changed, but its spirit remains the same. For nearly three decades, Arad has countered the traditional separation of the roles of architect, designer, and artist. Prominent in art and design communities while keeping a foot in industrial mass production, he has inspired a new generation of designers in many fields to adopt hybrid practices that have the flexibility to match today’s shifts in design applications. His work has been imitated, idolized, feverishly discussed, and criticized, but never ignored.
Ron Arad: No Discipline celebrates the designer’s interdisciplinary and “no-disciplinary” spirit. Physical concepts are traced through works in different materials and scales, and objects are grouped in families based on a shared form, material, technique, or structural idea. The exhibition culminates in Cage sans Frontières, Arad’s giant structure that cradles all the other works.
Extract from: MoMA
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