Ron Arad - Design New York Wednesday, December 17, 2008 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Gallery Mourmans, Maastricht, The Netherlands

  • Exhibited

    "Ron Arad and Ingo Maurer," Spazio Krizia, Milan Furniture Fair, 1999

  • Literature

    Deyan Sudjic, Ron Arad, London, 1999, p. 205 for a similar example and pp. 201-211 for a discussion about the “B.O.O.P” series; Charlotte and Peter Fiell, eds., Designing the 21st Century, Cologne, 2001, p. 37 for a similar example; Alexander Payne and James Zemaitis, The Coffee Table Coffee Table Book, London/New York, 2003, p. 117 for a similar example; Matthew Collings, Ron Arad Talks to Matthew Collings, London, 2004, pp. 230-231 for a similar example

  • Catalogue Essay

    Acronyms are 20th century improvisations, new words cut and welded from old vocabularies. B.O.O.P. falls quickly off the tongue; it betrays a restless author impatient with conventional forms of expression. Like most of Ron Arad’s constructions, this one flaunts "roundedness": its articulation requires round lips. The word is phonetically round and literally too: two oh-voids framed by plosive consonants. A fitting acronym, for Arad’s aesthetic is an explosive one, Blown Out Of All Proportion and animated by full contours, just like Betty Boop.
     
    ‘Blow out of proportion’ suggests a perversion of proper relations, for Arad’s shapes—blown and hammered—are never polite. The idiom suggests a mountain made from a molehill: to consider something more important than it is. Arad himself once referred to his early work as “doing things people didn’t need—and selling them at a price that most people couldn’t afford.”
     
    But the expression has a stricter sense. Arad formed this series of mirror-polished aluminum objects through a manufacturing process called blow molding. He heated 6-millimeter sheet aluminum in an oven, extruded the molten metal, and forced it into various molds under high air pressure. The resulting shapes were welded together, ground down, and polished. To borrow an observation from Deyan Sudjic, these mirrored shapes twist and amplify their reflected surroundings. In contradiction to the name, the result is a lovely symmetry. Process, product, and effect balance on a single word: distortion.

  • Artist Biography

    Ron Arad

    Israeli • 1951

    Ron Arad's work and career is characterized by his movement between modes and constant experimentation. Arad was born in Tel Aviv, Israel in 1951 and studied at the Jerusalem Academy of Art before moving to London in 1973. He began his practice in London in the early 1980s and set up One Off Ltd, focused on limited edition objects, with his partner Caroline Thorman. A decade later he had moved to industrial production techniques and collaborations with large design firms such as Vitra and Kartell.

    A persistent theme throughout his work is innovation and the idea of the "new." Still producing work today, Arad uses the latest technology to produce his designs and also integrates it within his pieces, such as his Lolita Chandelier (2004) that can receive and display text messages. Arad also continually experiments with materials and has an exceptional skill to coax volume and undulation out of them, with a particular affinity for metal. His works such as The Big Easy chair (1988) walk the line between design and sculpture. Once an outsider, Arad's relentless energy to design, build and collaborate has placed him firmly within the highest ranks of the design world.

    View More Works

75

Unique “B.O.O.P. (Blown Out of Proportion)” coffee table

1998
Blown aluminum. 
11 1/4 x 54 1/4 x 35 1/2 in. (28.6 x 137.8 x 90.2 cm.)
Produced by Ron Arad Associates, UK for The Gallery Mourmans, The Netherlands.

Estimate
$70,000 - 90,000 

Design

17 Dec 2008 2pm
New York