Ron Arad at Ivorypress

With his annual September shows at the Ivorypress Gallery, Norman Foster has single-handedly put Madrid on the map as far as first-class architecture exhibitions go.

After memorably featuring Jean Prouvé, Bucky Fuller or Zaha Hadid in past editions, this year he turns to a younger London contemporary, Ron Arad.

From the Ivorypress web page:

"From 5 September, Ivorypress will host a solo exhibition of architect and designer Ron Arad (Tel Aviv, 1951). The show—as part of the annual architecture programme celebrated each autumn at Ivorypress to mark the beginning of the season—covers the achievements and the latest work of this label-defying artist who has been based in London since the 1970s.

"The exhibition, which will run until 9 November, shows his singular perspective on architecture, design and the artistic object. With his interest in experimentation as a starting point, Ron Arad studies the expressive possibilities of different materials such as steel, aluminium, Corian and polyethylene.

"His approach to form and structure has a freedom which is unlimited by links or borders. ‘The principle is that everything should be based on something that didn’t exist before’, says Arad. In line with this philosophy, the show includes some of his most iconic works along with industrially produced objects and several mock-ups and architectural projects.

"Among Arad’s latest experiments that will be on show at Ivorypress Space, the Folly bench (2013) is particularly worthy of mention. Made by rotational moulding, Folly constitutes a large sculptural object composed of soft lines that endow it with great vitality. Movement, whether in his functional creations or in his purely aesthetic pieces, is always the main element of his work.

​"Also among the objects on show is Blame the Tools (2013), in line with Arad’s early works made of waste materials. Additionally, the selection includes the workstation No Bad Colours (2013), which is the source of another experimental line of inquiry, centred on technological components rather than on plastic or ergonomic value. The exhibition at Ivorypress Space provides the opportunity to observe the diversity of his work and to re-examine his creative production.

"Ron Arad received his training from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, in Jerusalem, and the Architectural Association School of Architecture, in London. In 1981 he founded the One Off design and production studio with Caroline Thorman and in 1989 he created the Ron Arad architecture and design studio. He has also been Professor of Design Products at Royal College of Art in London from 1998 to 2009."

Ron Arad 
Sept. 5 - Nov. 9, 2013

Ivorypress 

Comandante Zorita 46-48

28020 Madrid SPAIN

Monday to Friday, 10:00 - 14:00; 16:30 - 20:00

Saturday, 11:00 -  2:00

 

 Photo:
"Southern Hemisphere", 2006

© Ron Arad and Associates

Courtesy of Ivorypress

Present Crisis and Glories Past

Articles for readers in both Spanish and English appear this week: The Architectural Review publishes my pundit piece (they asked for something "pithy") on the effect of the crisis on Spanish architecture (The Death of the Icon, it's alarmingly called; love the Brit's apocalyptic journalistic headline craft), and a review of the show on Jean Prouvé in Madrid, which appeared in the cultural supplement of El País this Saturday (Visionario y Pragmático).

On the crisis, I make a quick survey of the debris accumulated so far to conclude, among other things, that "the profession is clearly preparing itself for a period of contained, functionalist remorse, although it remains to be seen if politicians and voters will be capable of capturing the change in sensibility."

On the Prouvé show, organized by Norman Foster for his wife's Madrid gallery, I plot the interesting connections between Prouvé and Foster himself, as captured in "the photo of an older Prouvé heading the jury for the competition of the Pompidou Center in Paris, won by Foster's former associate Richard Rogers together with Renzo Piano. The photo seems intended to mark the changing of the guard between Prouvé, one of the original masters of the Modern Movement, and the High Tech generation to which Foster himself belongs, a generation that with this project took its first steps into the limelight."


Top photo: The Niemeyer Foundation in the northern post-industrial city of Avilés, yet another Guggenheimesque cultural center that will close after just six months of operation, due to local political squabbling. Photo from The Architectural Review.

Second photo: Construction shot of the Aeroclub Roland Garros in Bac, 1936, by Jean Prouvé and the architects Eugène Beaudouin and Marcels Lods, High Tech avant la lettre. Photo courtesy of Ivory Press Art + Books, © Fonds Jean Prouvé.

Exhibitions: Jean Prouvé at Ivory Press

Luis Fernández-Galiano and Norman Foster get together again this fall to bring a show on Jean Prouvé to the Ivory Press Gallery in Madrid. From the web page on the show:

"From the originality of his earlier furniture to the sophistication of his later constructive systems, the oeuvre of the French genius is an example of committed engagement with prefabrication and industrialisation, and also serves as a bottomless source of inspiration.
 
The exhibition follows a chronological layout in ten sections, each one featuring original drawings and photographs accompanied by critical texts. The selection includes a wide range of furniture, architecture models and fragments of buildings, like his celebrated 6x6 house: a spectacular 1:1 scale prototype that is in turn a manifesto of Prouvé’s interest in lightness and prefabrication in architecture".

Exactly a year ago, the same team brought a remarkable show on Bucky Fuller to the gallery, which is run by Foster's wife, Elena Ochoa. The full-scale model of Prouvé's 6x6 house bids to match the interest of Foster's reproduction of the Dymaxion car seen there last year. 

Jean Prouvé 1901-1984: Industrial Beauty

Sept. 01 - Nov. 12, 2011

Ivorypress Art+Books Space I 

Comandante Zorita 48

Madrid

To accompany the show, Fernández-Galiano's magazine AV Monografias has dedicated its latest issue, No. 149, to Prouvé.

Image above © Centre Georges Pompidou

Bucky Lands in Madrid

Norman Foster and Luis Fernández-Galiano have organized a show in Madrid titled "Bucky Fuller & Spaceship Earth" that includes a full-size replica of the Dymaxion Car -- only three prototypes of the original vehicle were made in 1933-34.

The show is at Ivory Press & Books, a bookstore and publisher housed in a space designed by Foster and run by his wife, Elena Ochoa. They've also edited a handsome book on the vehicle. I've found some of the previous ventures by the Press a bit precious, but this is something else, a luxury in every sense of the word.

Foster's interest in Fuller goes back to his student days at Yale, and he collaborated with him on projects in the 1970s. His comments on the show are on the Foster and Partners' press office web page.

The show is open through this month.

Ivorypress Art+Books
Ivorypress Ltd.
Comandante Zorita, 48
28020 Madrid

In coordination with the show, AV Monográfías 143 is dedicated enitely to Fuller,with texts by Foster, Fenández-Galiano, Allegra Fuller Snyder and many others, in Spanish and English. See Table of Contents.