One Off. Mobles inquietants

Ron Arad

06/05/87. (Sala 088)

From May 6 to 30, 1987

In recent years an innovative movement has been taking shape in England in the field of design, promoted by those who seek ways to manufacture and distribute their own products, outside of the large manufacturing chains.

This small-scale production has led to a certain recovery of the artisan tradition and to the introduction of artistic elements in the functional development of objects.

The “One-Off” gallery-shop-workshop run by Ron Arad, located in London’s Covent Garden since the 1980s, moves along these lines.

Ron Arad treats design as art, minimizes functionality, without forgetting it, and explores those issues that concern him: “Design and Art, new and old, accidental and incidental, to transform the very essence of the object into something that is unnecesary”. Ron Arad works with diverse materials – metal, wood, vinyl, glass, rubber – he recovers them, manipulates them, and always surprises.

Someone has defined Ron Arad’s work as an encounter between medieval times and the post-atomic desert era; it has also been written that in the event of a supposed war, one would guess whether it had been won or lost if Philippe Starck’s or Ron Arad’s aesthetics prevailed, respectively.

The Rover chair, the Well-Tempered chair, the horn clock that projects the time, a collection of tables, the Concrete Stereo, are some of the Unsettling Furniture that he presents at La Sala.