Upon seeing the Panna Cotta table for the first time, one gets a clear sense of how conceptual geometry and tangible, usable objects intersect. This quality pertains to much of designer Ron Gilad’s work, particularly his contributions to the great Molteni&C furniture company. Even a simple wall mirror becomes in Gilad’s hands something to admire, contemplate, enjoy. “I like to consider what it is like to live among things,” he explains, sitting in a new 2,700-square-foot Molteni&C shop-in-shop at Vancouver’s Livingspace showroom. “Thinking about how we live leads to creating objects that encourage a positive feeling for the people who encounter them, use them.”
Gilad came to Molteni&C through a Flos event several years ago. His work for Flos, an Italian lamp company, was generating plenty of interest, and caught the eye of Giulia Molteni. As Gilad was departing, as is usual for his reticent self, very quickly from an auditorium where he had given a talk, a hand stopped the elevator door from closing. In stepped Molteni. “They are such an illustrious, large, accomplished company,” Gilad says. “I wasn’t sure I could fit into this world.” However, after some discussion and some preliminary projects, he is “so happy with this relationship. I needed them to know who I am in order for us to work together. It has gone very well. I explore the relationship between function and design, and do not have to worry about mass production, distribution, all those important things I know very little about.”
“I do not look at a finished piece and congratulate myself. Instead, I see what could be better, more fully realized.
And that is what fuels me.”
After a 10-year stint in New York, Gilad now divides his time between his native Tel Aviv and Milan. It works very well for him: “In Milan, I get things done. In Tel Aviv, I dream.” His return to Tel Aviv after a decade away meant his “social network had largely dissipated. So, in Tel Aviv I actually have a quiet, fairly solitary life, and it is a city that provides such a rich atmosphere, a great place for me to let my thoughts run quietly along.” Gilad does not often think in terms of the tangible, the actual object, saying that he does not create an individual piece, but rather a story. He frequently refers to his designs as a kind of alphabet, a language, a narrative, in which he “asks questions all the time, knowing the answers will be different as you go along.” He is not overly concerned with popularity, but remains highly focused on his work. “I will never be rich, but I don’t have to keep one eye on the marketplace at all times, either,” he says. “Besides, it is difficult to predict a best-seller, in this or any other era.”
Still, Gilad’s successes have been remarkable, including a solo exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, called “The Logical, the Ironic, and the Absurd”. It is in some ways a summation of his creative output, and the ideas that drive it. But more so, it is a kind of contemplation of the juncture between design and art. “I never start out thinking a new piece will become a work of art or become a nice chair,” he says. “It will become what it is meant to be.” This is examined in a different way in the Glass Cube, a free-standing display area of Gilad’s work for Molteni&C, located on the company’s main showroom facility in Giussano, Italy. Here, the emphasis is slightly towards service and function, but art is still a main component. Another of his exhibitions was called “Spaces Etc./ An Exercise in Utility”; the title alone reveals his sense of play, of humour, and the always-present reality that nothing is ever perfect.
“In Milan, I get things done. In Tel Aviv, I dream.”
The rules of design for Gilad have long been assimilated, understood fully, and then pushed aside, to allow for creativity. “I try to stay naïve, even though I learn more and more all the time,” he says. The Goldman banker’s lamp he designed for Flos is a good example of how spirited Gilad is, and how he balances, in a high-wire kind of way, the line between abstraction and functionality. In his 45°/Vetrina showcase for Molteni&C, the shelves and walls are transparent, thus encouraging the observer to focus on the contents of the unit, and not even think the structure is there at all. This is the most profound point of the Glass Cube, as well, where the construction of a typical “showroom” is virtually non-existent.
A profound sense of dissatisfaction drives him forward. “I do not look at a finished piece and congratulate myself. Instead, I see what could be better, more fully realized. And that is what fuels me,” he says. “You could say I enjoy suffering.” That may be true, but as he explains, “to feel alive, you have to intrigue yourself. And to encourage yourself to be as free as possible.” Gilad looks around the room. “I always try to keep the mind of a child,” he says. “I don’t invent anything new, but I look at objects with an open mind, so I can think about what they actually do, how they function.” Minimalist, evocative, walking the line between art and utility, free of preconception—this is his work.
