“The State of Things,” the inaugural exhibition of the Design Museum Holon, features more than 100 objects that collectively reflect issues concerning the practice, consumption and cultural impact of contemporary international design. Ranging from ordinary household items to life-enhancing and life-saving technologies, the objects in this exhibition reveal the same ingenuity and poetic quality evident in the new Ron Arad building that houses them. Each grouping of works represents a contemporary category whether through the materials employed, the concepts conveyed, or the uses intended, these objects reflect our times so acutely that they could only have been made in the last few years, and thus bespeak the current “state of things.”
The catgories of the exhibition are: New Essentialism, Mutant Remix, Of the Body, Social Anxiety, Super Beauty, Craft Economy and Design Lab. You can read more information about the eight categories here.
“Today, more than at any other time in the past, people around the globe live in an elevated state of anxiety provoked by both actual and perceived dangers. As a result of this heightened sensitivity to potential risks and threats, suddenly we all question where to find a secure environment in which to live our lives. Some of the most significant contemporary issues that engender feelings of powerlessness, helplessness and social disintegration include the international economic meltdown, seemingly never-ending wars, the threat of terrorism, widely transmittable diseases, increasing destruction of the environment, natural disasters and the growing divide between the wealthy and the more than 1,200,000,000 people living on less than $1 a day.” – Social Anxiety and Contemporary Design / By Barbara Bloemink. For the whole article by Barbara Bloemink please click here.
nendo [Established, Tokyo, 2002]
Cabbage Chair, 2008
Pleated paper
28 x 26 x 30 inches
71.1 x 66 x 76.2 cm
Joris Laarman [Dutch, b. 1976]
WirePod, 2008
