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Decades ago, as a child, the designer Ron Arad found a toy police car on the street in Tel Aviv, run over and flattened. He has kept that car ever since. Now he has flattened six full sized, real cars and hung them on the wall of a museum — the Design Museum Holon in Israel–whose building Arad also designed. The squashed old Fiat 500s are one of a series of pieces in a show called In Reverse that might be said to be works of art exploring the nature of design. The Fiat 500 was the car of the people, he said—and of his generation. He compares them to children’s drawings of cars or cartoons of wrecked cars. They also look like gigantic versions of bugs mounted on microscope slides. Or they look like Pressed Flowers, the title he has given them in the show..

pressed flower yellow 2013

Also on display is a wonderful wooden model of the 500, used to shape metal, from the Fiat Archive and Museum. Arad also offs a sculpture called Roddy Giacosa –the name plays on Dante Giacosa, designer of the 500, made of rods of stainless steel arranged to take the shape of a Fiat 500. / images courtesy of ron arad

roddy giacosa

1>6 roddy giacosa
7 wooden fiat 500
8>18 pressed flowers (various colors including ‘rust’)
20>21 let’s drop it, ok?

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