Ron Arad - Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Friday, October 17, 2008 | Phillips

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  • Exhibited

    Exhibited: Barry Friedman Gallery, Paved with Good Intentions, December 2005, Design Miami, Miami

  • Catalogue Essay


    A table at best is a fixed platform. It supports (cups, conversations) on a level plane.Tables aren’t meant to move – dining at sea is no mean feat – but Ron Arad’s tables do, not literally of course but in every other way: they stretch across the floor, around the bend, up the wall. Arad, after all, has made a career of undermining limitations and ignoring expectations, in this case gravity and stability.The present lot is one of 69 unique mirrorpolished stainless steel tables first displayed en suite by Barry Friedman Gallery at Design Miami/2005.That installation, Paved with Good Intentions, continued Arad’s commitment to challenge expectations and disrupt space, as with his earlier installations of grouped reflective tables at the Fondation Cartier in 1994 and a year later at the MilanTriennale. In Miami his curved, organic shapes crowded Friedman’s stand and forced viewers to move in narrow paths, like dry feet inching around a menace of puddles. Impatient with the ground, tables curved up walls; some, mounted vertically, functioned more as mirrors.When asked about the importance of curves, he replied: ‘I don’t really analyze it. But maybe it’s about the freedom to do what you want and not take orders from rehearsed things that were done before you.’ (Ron Arad talks with Matthew Collings, Phaidon Press, London, 2004, p. 227). Arad, by pushing his tables up the wall, legislates his own law of nature: the artist’s will has greater force than mass alone.

  • 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

313

Unique ‘Paved With Good Intentions’ table

2005
Mirror-polished stainless steel.  Executed by Ron Arad.
91.5 cm. (36 in). high
Associates, UK.  Edge of table cast with ’31 R Arad 2005’.

Estimate
£40,000 - 60,000 

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

18 Oct 2008, 7pm
London