Ron Arad, Don't Ya Tell Henri

Opera Gallery New York

17 May - 14 June 2023

Opera Gallery is delighted to present Ron Arad’s solo exhibition ‘Don’t Ya Tell Henri’ in New York from May 17- June 14. In his second solo show with Opera Gallery, Arad explores the duality between structure and absence within the material world.

Widely recognized as one of the most innovative and influential designers of our time, Ron Arad’s work transcends the traditional spheres of art, design, and architecture. Through his use of bold color and fluid forms, he captures the essence of movement and energy while conceptually exploring the marriage between beauty and utility. Throughout his more than 40 year career, Arad’s versatile creative output has moved seamlessly across genres, aesthetically exploring conflicting ideologies through the use of new technologies and methods. Through the deconstruction and reimagining of motifs within his oeuvre, Arad challenges traditional narratives about form and function.

The title of the exhibition–both an homage to Bob Dylan’s 1971 song performed with The Band and Henri Matisse’s lingering thematic influence on Arad’s diverse body of work–features an array of new crystalline resin pieces, centered around ‘Don’t Ya Tell Henri,’ the eponymously titled bookshelf crafted as a three dimensional reincarnation of Henri Matisse’s 1953 collage ‘The Snail.’ Using the framework of a bookshelf, Arad’s work revisits and builds upon the striking and dynamic interplay of Matisse’s cut-out collage series through new means and modalities. New iterations of Arad’s iconic ‘Big Easy’ and ‘Little Albert’ chairs, ‘Tube Sofa,’ and ‘Two Legs and a Table’ tables will also be on display.