THE ABSOLUTE ABSURDIST
For Israeli designer Ron Gilad, being amused at work is top priority. Luckily for him, his unconventional designs turn out to be as functional as they are quirky
Ask Ron Gilad what job he would have chosen if he were not a designer, and the response is a puzzled frown. “I don’t know,” says Gilad, looking genuinely perplexed. “I have only wanted to design all my life.” The quirky Israeli designer was a tad morose from jet lag when he arrived for the 11 a.m. interview. Arriving in Singapore for the opening of luxury furniture retailer MACSK recently, he was still recovering from the previous night’s launch party. But a shot of caffeine and a bull’s eye question on his life passion soon brought back a sparkle in those intense eyes. Drawn to pencil and paper from a very young age, 42-year-old Gilad started doodling abstract diagrams and playing with perspectives for his own amusement while other children were pottering about with more conventional toys.
ROAD TO SUCCESS
At first he chose to study architecture but soon realised he preferred something that had a human dimension. Also, he adds, he was too impatient to create something that would take 10 years and opted instead of something that was “tangible and immediate”. So he switched to studying industrial design at the prestigious Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem and later taught 3-D and conceptual design at the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design from 1999 to 2001. He moved to New York in 2001 where he co-founded design studio Designfenzider, coming up with iconic items like the 16lamp Dear Ingo retractable light fixture and geometrical modernist fruit bowls that upturns conventional perceptions of reality and function.
BUSINESS OF ART
During the 10 years in New York, he was approached by pioneering Chicago auctioneer Richard Wright to produce an 80-piece solo exhibition in 2009 called ‘Spaces Etc. / An Exercise in Utility’. A second exhibition ‘20 Houses for 20 Friends’ followed, featuring small scale three-dimensional outlines of houses. Designfenzider is now “a past life”, says Gilad. In spite of attracting the attention of art curators, having companies knock on their doors and having widespread media coverage, he and his business partner had struggled to keep the company profitable. Gilad soon felt the strain and decided that this was not the kind of environment he wanted for his craft. “I was exposed to the workings of a real company and I know that I’d never be able to form something like this by myself. But I don’t want to be all these people – the developer, the engineer, the PR person and all that – I just want to create. I want to work with the industry and not be the industry.” Today Gilad, who has works in the permanent collections of museums like New York’s Museum of Modern Art, The Art Institute of Chicago and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, has his own studio with only one assistant and divides his time between Tel Aviv and Milan. He states happily that he has turned down many opportunities because he does not want to increase the scale of his studio and end up managing people. Instead, he chooses carefully whom he wants to work with and what he wants to do, such as taking on more architectural projects and designing a private villa.
He says, “I don’t want to be a boss. I’m the one who makes coffee for my assistant and not the opposite. I want to maintain this life of working both in the industry and being an independent artist. I think there’s something very fruitful about it. I’m not being bored.”
SELFISH HAPPINESS
The subject of self-entertainment as a priority comes up often. No boring, repetitive and redundant assignments, please. Gilad, who won the Designer of the Year awards from Elle Décor and Wallpaper design magazines in 2013, wants to provoke, challenge and have fun by injecting a sense of humour, absurdity and doubt in his creations. “It’s a language that is evolving,” he says. “I want to create the possibility and not the conclusion, such as creating words that form different sentences by different people. I don’t want to be the poet or write the poem, I just want to give people possibilities.” But when commissioned by companies like Molteni & C, Flos and Mooi, Gilad recognises the need to stay true to the brand’s history and background and “to extend the evolution of their products”. Still, he insists that he does not compromise on his design principles. “First and foremost I’m trying to entertain myself. It’s a very selfish concept but I don’t try to flatter anyone nor envision the end user in front of me when I design for companies. But he or she is at the back of my mind all the time. There is a known history of function, of what
“I JUST WANT TO CREATE. I WANT TO WORK WITH THE INDUSTRY AND NOT BE THE INDUSTRY”
is a surface to sit on or to serve, of what is a container, and I do learn the history. There are many layers and fragments all over the brain but you don’t use it all at once all the time. I’m not creating in a void.” Hence came the Grado collection he designed for Molteni & C. Call it serendipity or pure genius, Gilad’s playing with geometry and the meeting point between three lines morphed into drawings of cubic and rectangular structures where a glass top could fit snugly. The Tavolino coffee tables as well as Segreto workstation under this collection were also a projection of Gilad’s obsession with boxes in his younger days, where he would order things from Ebay but never opened the packages when they arrived. “I was fascinated with the idea of secrets in boxes and these tables give the idea of hiding and revealing secrets,” explains Gilad, the merry gleam in his eyes returning again. And this is the state he wants to remain in; a wonderland of his own where he is free to explore, dream and be curious. “I will not give up my naiveté. For me it’s very crucial not to grow up and make that perfect proportionate table. I prefer to stay between being childlike and mature, like a teenager, and allow myself to make mistakes.”