Ivorypress Art + Books shows in Madrid a retrospective about the work of Ron Arad.

The exhibition will run until November 9th as part of the ‘Cycle of Architecture’ that Ivorypress Space – founded by Elena Ochoa and designed by her husband Norman Foster – celebrates every year in Autumn. The show focusses on the latest work of  Ron Arad, an artist who is difficult to categorise and has lived in London since the 1970s.

© Paco Gómez, courtesy of Ivorypress

© Paco Gómez, courtesy of Ivorypress

© Paco Gómez, courtesy of Ivorypress

The exhibition offers a panorama of his singular vision in architecture, design and artistry. Via an enormous interest in experimentation, Ron Arad has been studying the possibilities that diverse materials such as steel, aluminium, Corian and polythene can express.

© Paco Gómez, courtesy of Ivorypress

Arad’s way of approaching form and structure coverts his designs into pieces free of boundaries or references. «The only premise one should use is not to base it on anything that already exists,» he has said. The show includes his most emblematic work along with industrial design pieces as well as various models and architectural projects.

© Courtesy of Ivorypress and Ron Arad

Amongst Arad’s latest experiments that you can see in the Ivorypress Space show, stand outs include the Folly bench (2013). Executed using rotational moulding, it is a sculptural object featuring soft lines that shape its huge form. Movement, whether for function or aesthetic, is always present in his work.

© Couetesy of Ivorypress and Ron Arad

Another of the pieces on show is Blame the Tools (2013) that recalls Arad’s earlier work and is made of cast off elements.

© Courtesy of Ivorypress and Ron Arad

The show also includes various sculptural shelving units such as Free Standing China (2010), a single piece of stainless steel cut into a map of China and its provinces, and No Bad Colours (2013), a piece that kickstarted his experimental phase of focussing more on technology as opposed to artistry or ergometry.

© Courtesy of Ivorypress and Ron Arad

© Courtesy of Ivorypress and Ron Arad

Ron Arad is a multidisciplinary and unclassifiable artist. He is as technically avant-garde as artisan, and notably more a designer than an architect. This exhibition in Ivorypress Space offers the opportunity to get to know his diversity and creative output. A decade has passed since his last individual show in Spain in 2003 at the Centre d’Art Santa Mònica in Barcelona.

© Courtesy of Ivorypress and Ron Arad

More about Ron Arad

Ron Arad studied at the Bazalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem and the Architectural Association in London. In 1981 he founded the design and production studio One Off with Caroline Thorman and the Ron Arad design and architecture studio in 1989. He taught product design at the Royal College of Art between 1998 and 2009.

© Courtesy of Ivorypress and Ron Arad

His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums across the globe such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York. His pieces form part of important public and private collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein (Germany), as well as the permanent collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Read more about Ron Arad in diarioDESIGN

More about Ivorypress

Founded in 2009, Ivorypress Art + Books in Madrid was designed by the architect Norman Foster from an old printing house and adjacent garage. The gallery is the first project of its kind from publishing house Ivorypress, which was founded by his wife, Elena Ochoa. This unique space connects the world of books with art and has various exhibition spaces and an extensive gallery. The shows and the books on sale have a heavy emphasis on contemporary art, photography and architecture.

Read more about Ivorypress in diarioDESIGN
© Manuel Yllera|, courtesy of Ivorypress