Look Again: Ron Gilad Art

With Ron Gilad, what you see is not necessarily what you get

Deborah Wilk -- Interior Design, 8/1/2009 12:00:00 AM

Installing "Spaces Etc./An Exercise in Utility" at Chicago's Wright auction house. Photo by Monica Castiglioni.

In the postmodern world, it's hardly groundbreaking to hear someone reject the idea that form follows function. Ron Gilad, however, could be accused of taking that rejection a step further. Put another way, this industrial designer tends to see how objects can morph into one another: how a glass becomes a vase or how 16 task lamps combine to become a chandelier. In "Spaces Etc./An Exercise in Utility" at Chicago's Wright auction house, he offered tables that became drawings and pedestals that became floor lamps—while turning the idea of legs on its ear.

Trained at Jerusalem's Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, the New York transplant works under the name Designfenzider to create both one-off objects and production pieces, including a five-fixture lighting collection for Flos. In the sunshine-filled Brooklyn studio he shares with a staff of three, he talked about the blurred lines between design and fine art.


The 7,000-square-foot installation at Wright. Courtesy of Wright.

Do you differentiate between the two in your work?

As Louis XIV said, "I am the state." No, I definitely don't see a specific borderline. I think of Donald Judd's furniture, which is so similar to his sculpture but is meant to be used. Most of the chairs have backs at 90-degree angles to the seats, which is not at all ergonomic or comfortable. Still, they're sold as chairs.

In your Wright catalog, Art Institute of Chicago curator Zoë Ryan writes that you seek to radically alter objects beyond their utility.

I start by injecting a different meaning into the object. In order to reevaluate it, there must be something new or extra. I attempt to understand the essence of what already exists, then slowly readjust it to my needs. Metaphorically, I see myself as a linguist who is trying to understand the origin of words in order to determine synonyms. With the synonyms, I invent my own language.


The mannequin legs of Butler No. 1. Photo by Monica Castiglioni.

But I don't see this as radical. Radical is to ignore everything that came before you and start from scratch. Isaac Newton said, "If I have seen further, it is because I have stood upon the shoulders of giants." It's always about what already exists, not about reinventing the wheel. I investigate the world in the most objective way possible, meaning that I take, say, a bowl out of context and try to understand what a bowl is. Then I start to play with it.

Do functional objects behave differently when they're offered as art?

They borrow ideas from the art world and are sort of transformed as a result. For example, what happens when you combine a pedestal—which is used to display artwork in a museum—with a functional object? What happens when you put a vitrine on top of the pedestal and put lightbulbs inside? Are the bulbs a piece of art, or does the combination of objects become a lamp? I think it becomes a lamp.

 
No. 3 in stainless steel and Console in Swiss pear wood and brass. Courtesy of Wright. A Flos production piece, Teca in glass, lacquer, and silk.Courtesy of Flos.

At Wright, you often substituted negative space for actual objects. Was that metaphoric?

It's more literal than that. I designed a stool that looks like the crate for a stool that's been removed. The void could then be interpreted another way, perhaps as a container for magazines. You can be literal and just look at shape or function, but I think it's smarter to see what the void contains—to understand not just what exists but also what doesn't exist, then what can exist.

Are exhibitions an ideal forum to introduce work?

It's intriguing to be offered a specific space to do an installation that tells a whole story. You're able to show how a narrative that you developed recently relates to one from last season, even to one you might have written in your childhood.


Ron Gilad and Art Institute of Chicago design curator Zoë Ryan reflected in Drawing No. 2. Photo by Monica Castiglioni.

Do you have any threads that extend that far back?

If you looked at my student work and the objects I'm designing now, I think you'd see a line that connects them. I'm digging deeper in understanding. I'm stripping away every detail to reach the essence of the object.

But somehow you still make room for whimsy.

The whimsical quality is a side effect. Sometimes, once I get at the essence of an object, I might have to remind the viewers of what they're looking at. The studio is a playground.