Phillips would like to thank Caroline Thorman from Ron Arad Associates for her assistance cataloguing the present lot.

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Ron Arad’s “Blo Void 4” belongs to a family of seating in which the London-based, Tel Aviv-born designer explored the design potential of high-tech and sometimes unconventional materials. The dimensions and proportions of each version from the group vary but all adhere to the same basic form: that of a rocking chaise longue composed of two joined ellipses. For the first version, created in 2003 as part of the “Paperwork” collection, Arad used carbon fiber. He then experimented with Corian—a hard-wearing plastic more often associated with kitchen countertops than high-design furniture—layering the material with an adhesive tinted in a contrasting color, which, when carved into the chaise form, achieved an undulating wood grain pattern not unlike Japanese mokume. With other versions Arad alternated layers of clear and opaque acrylic, creating fascinating patterns of light. For the “Voido” chair, which is manufactured by the Italian firm Magis and is the only version that is not a limited edition, Arad chose rotational-molded polyethylene.

Despite these wide-ranging explorations into new materials, metal has always been central to Ron Arad’s practice as a designer, from his earliest creations in welded scrap steel, to the present lot, “Blo Void 4,” which is composed of superplastic aluminum, a state-of-the-art aluminum alloy first developed for the aeronautics industry. When heated superplastic aluminum can be stretched to several times its original size and can be mold-blown into an infinite variety of shapes and sizes, all the while maintaining the desirable characteristics of aluminum such as strength and lightness, as well the ability to achieve a high polish and to take on a tinted color through anodization. Arad took advantage of these characteristics with “Blo Void 4,” a volumetric form that almost appears to hover weightlessly in space, the blue anodization gracefully outlining the shape.