Victoria & Albert Museum To October 1, 2000                 A sliver of stainless steel and mirrored glass slices through the entrance hall of the Victoria & Albert museum, right through its precious medieval collection to the garden courtyard. This prime placement for contemporary design is representative of the venerable museum's intention to drag its slightly dusty image into the twenty-first century. This small-scale retrospective, or installation, as the V&A prefers to call it, explores Israeli-born designer Ron Arad's work over the past decades with an overview of objects from all phases of his career. Probably best known for his early designs, represented by pieces such as the Rover Chair and the Concrete Stereo, it also shows more recent aspects of his work. Selected by Arad and Caroline Thorman, former manager and co-founder of the One Off workshop, they include the Tom Vac stacking chairs and computer-generated vases. Among the lenders to this exhibitions are private collectors as well as the manufacturers, including producers of modern design classics such as Kartell, Moroso and Alessi. Probably as familiar as Arad's designs are some of the names of his pieces, like the 'Fantastic Plastic Elastic', 'Beware of the Dog' or the 'Looming Lloyd Chair', that seem to have been lifted straight from seventies comics. Born in 1951 in Tel Aviv to a painter mother and a photographer father, Arad moved to London in 1973. He studied for five years at the Architectural Association-School of Architecture, where he was a contemporary of Zaha Hadid and Nigel Coates. After two years at an architectural practice in London, his interest in design prevailed and he founded the One Off Ltd. Workshop in Covent Garden with Denis Grove and Caroline Thorman. Here he made his first series of interior structures and furniture designs composed from objets trouvés, tubes and clamps, the most famous result of which is the Rover Chair. Exemplary of Arad's witty postmodern designs, the Rover Chair is full of irony in combining a piece of rubbish (an old car seat) with a tubular suspension frame to create a piece of seating furniture. Even more ironic is the fact that the first Rover Chair was bought by fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier for his London shop and has since become an icon of modern design. One Off Ltd. contributed to the public awareness of modern furniture design by hosting the first shows of Danny Lane, Tom Dixon and Jon Mills, who are now all established designers in their own right. Arad's own work soon moved into the mainstream of modern furniture design. In 1986 he was commissioned by Vitra to design a chair for their new range of seating furniture. From this collaboration emerged the Well Tempered Chair, and later experimental objects such as the Old Dog, New Tricks. Seven years after the foundation of One Off, he established Ron Arad Associates Ltd., and was commissioned with the interior design of the Belgo Centraal, a chain of Belgian restaurants in London, and the foyer of the Tel Aviv Opera House.                 His studio in Como, Italy, founded in 1994, works to adapt his designs for mass production, while the One Off Ltd. workshop in London continues to produce the more individual pieces. Starting out as an outsider, Arad has become an established member of the academic design community. He has held professorships for furniture and industrial design at the Royal College of Art, London, since 1997, and his pieces are now in the collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Tel Aviv Museum, and other major institutions. The mini-retrospective in the V&A illustrates the connection between art, design and architecture that is characteristic of Arad's work, and which makes his pieces unique. Displayed on mirrored glass pedestals that replicate the voluptuous forms of the Big Easy and Rolling Volume, the installation's appearance suggests a tidal wave that has washed in from the busy road outside and splashed down the entrance hall, leaving objects to swim around apparently at random. Unfortunately, the lack of space around the objects does not allow them to present their sculptural features to best advantage, and rather cramps their style. A slightly confusing computer program, designed by Arad himself, is provided to give insight into Arad's creative process and working methods, and also features some of his architectural projects. The text, which apparently feels the need to explain and even justify this installation, makes some far-fetched comparisons between the relics kept in precious boxes in the medieval collections, and Arad's own box projects. Precisely what one is meant to put in these as the modern equivalent, however, remains slightly obscure: a comparison between medieval workshop techniques and Ron Arad's modern craftsmanship seems unnecessary, and leaves the visitor slightly irritated. Despite these drawbacks, this exhibition is certainly a must for design aficionados and also an excellent opportunity to juxtapose some of the earlier works of twentieth-century design in the V&A permanent collections with Arad's cutting edge contemporary work. The museum shop offers some of his smaller objects for sale, including 'The Soundtrack', a CD storage system that combines mobility with storage in the witty manner typical of Arad. In addition, visitors wishing to create a piece of furniture with Ron Arad's assistance may contact the Vitra Design Museum in Germany for details of their workshops with Arad and other modern artists/designers. Victoria & Albert Museum Cromwell Road South Kensington, London SW7 2RL tel: 020-7942 2526 www.vam.ac.uk.  Carina Villinger is Expert for 20th Century Decorative Arts & Design at Sotheby's, London.               designinfo     Jul 19, 2007 - 05:14 PM