One of the prominent designers at Milan Design Week 2011 was Ron Gilad, an Israeli designer who works and lives abroad, and who has been gaining growing international recognition in recent years.

Ron Gilad by Monica Castiglioni

At the prestigious Dilmos Gallery in Milan, Gilad showed a series of nine mirrors entitled IX Mirrors. In their traditional function, mirrors only reflect appearance - our outer, not our inner selves. The title Gilad chose for the series alludes to the nine lives of a cat, and like the mirrors themselves he attempts to trace the inner lives or the soul of the mirror.

The mirrors, which are made of simple rectangular wooden frames, do not only reflect the person standing in front of them, but also tell their own story. Employing changes to scale and distorted proportions, Gilad challenges our perspective and connects with the here and now not only what was, but also what could have been.

The biggest attraction at the Salone de Mobile was the booth of Italian FLOS Lighting, in no small measure due to Ron Gilad. A chandelier made of 2,620 LED bulbs in rings randomly embedded into the wall, creating a sense of movement. The chandelier is a direct continuation of the Wall Piercing series, which was presented last year and attracted a great deal of attention.

Image courtesy of FLOS

Image courtesy of FLOS

In the series of installations for InterniMagazine that spread over expansive spaces in a local university, Ron Gilad presented an installation entitled The Neighborhood, a series of buildings made of metal, like metaphoric outlines of architectural design, by means of which he poses questions such as: What is a house? What is a neighborhood?

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