HOLON ISRAEL'S DESIGN MUSEUM HOLON'S 'NEW OLDS' EXHIBIT OF MODERN ART FURNITURE PIECES MADE FROM OLD THINGS

Lesser designers borrow, great designers steal.

For any young designer who thinks that the most innovative design bubbles up from some wellspring of genius within, independent of his predecessors' crotchety ideas, the Design Museum Holon has a welcome rejoinder: an exhibit that argues that everything new is ultimately pretty damned old.

Organized by the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (IFA), an arts organization, New Olds: Design Between Tradition and Innovationfeatures more than 70 design objects that deftly straddle the divide between the past and the future. Some of the pieces are straightforward homages to the arts of yore -- Israeli Pini Leibovich’s Happy Material, for instance, a bold, exuberant chair made of thousands of balloons that channels surrealist art (and, in turn, the exuberant contemporarySpanish design of the Campana Brothers). Others thumb their noses at the history books, like Front design’s Blow Away Vase, which warps classic Royal Blue Delft porcelain almost beyond recognition or Frank Willems’s Rubens chairs, which heap voluptuous, spray-painted mattresses atop antique chair legs to create furniture evocative of -- what else? -- a Peter Paul Rubens canvas.

The idea here isn't to blithely drop arcane historical references as a challenge to viewers: "Didya get it? Didya get it?" (Everyone knows that's what the art world is for.) The point is to prove how much history -- and in many cases, personal or national history -- informs innovation. In this sense, the exhibit is something of a public service to burgeoning designers. “We want to show the different ways in which it is possible to work with traditional aspects,” says curator Volker Albus in a prepared statement. “When ifa exhibitions tour around the world, I notice that young designers are not aware of their own culture and try to copy the western style. In this exhibition, we have a lot of designers who work with traditional aspects, so I want to help designers to concentrate, to look at their own roots.”

COMMENTARY:   I love that hammock. I could crawl in there and keep warm even in winter time. It has cocoon-like sensuous quality about it which I love.  Will it fit two?  The 'happy materials' chair is to die for.  What is not to like. Sort of reminds you of a colorful Old English sheep dog if you stare at it long enough.  Those children's pods made from woven rattan are adorable. Toddler's and the family cat or chihuaha could have tremendous fun crawling in and out of them.  

Courtesy of an article dated June 1, 2011 appearing in Fast Company Design and Holon, Israel's world famous Design Museum Holon

Comments

[online casinos]

children are playing a hide and sick game and hide in nice chair. A picture of amazing chair and table is so attractive for me.