angelvancouver

Earlier, I wrote about London artist, architect & industrial designer Ron Arad, whom I met through friends in London. I mentioned him after learning that Vancouver rock star/photographer Bryan Adams had taken this photo of Ron in a Fiat 500 – I thought maybe it was the same one I saw him driving in London to a mutual friend’s birthday party:

Recently I noticed Ron has a new art exhibit, In Reverse, which runs until October 19 at the Design Museum Holon in Israel, where Ron exhibits old Fiat 500s that have been pressed flat, like flowers pressed in a book, and mounted on the walls: 

Ron is also an architect who designed the Holon national Design Museum,  which opened this summer and is featured in the video below: The metal Fiat (above, made from hundreds of polished stainless steel rods) is paired with a wooden Fiat 500 — used as the mould for the original 1956 car designed by Dante Giacosa — on loan from the Fiat Museum in Turin:

When Fiat launched its new 500 car, Ron was asked to do a custom design for the Nuovo 500, and here’s what he came up with – a red line drawing of the old 500, in real size, painted on both sides of a new black 500. “They were initially reluctant to do it,” Arad explains, “because what is perceived and marketed as a small car seems huge in comparison with the old. But the idea grew on them and eventually they showed it in their launch events.”

And here is a spectacular bookshelf designed by Ron called the Farmer & the Cowman, first shown in 2009 at the Timothy Taylor Gallery in London with other new works by Arad:

Here is a good short interview with Ron: Today’s music video is by two Vancouver boys, Bryan Adams & Michael Buble, performing together this summer at London’s O2 arena, singing After All, which will be released as a single Sept 29: