Ron Arad (b. 1951)

Begun in 1988, Ron Arad's Volume series evolved from his exploration of the opposing concepts of empty and full, soft and hard, light and heavy. Using sheet steel cut from a flat pattern and beaten and welded by hand, the Big Easy represented a complete formal and aesthetic departure from Arad's earlier experiments and established a highly idiosyncratic design language. Dispensing with the illusion of comfort, and proposing instead the hazy hand-beaten impression of a chair, the Big Easy Mixed is delineated by free-hand seams that contain the alternating reflecting and opaque surfaces, ensuring that no two chairs are alike.