Melding art and design

LIKE many good artists, Ron Gilad, 42, does not really care what the viewer thinks. "I am very, very selfish. I am not trying to satisfy anyone but myself," he says.

In an exhibition of his works in Tel Aviv, where he was born, it was very clear that the art on display came from a very personal place. Called The Logical, The Ironic and the Absurd (2013), the exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art challenged the viewer to question the notion of home by reassessing everyday objects of domesticity. A simple door for instance, which may suggest a sense of exclusion along a boundary (or border), became a triumphal arch signifying free passage instead. Gilad also chose to deconstruct Le Corbusier's iconic LC2 sofa, itself a symbol of the egalitarian Modern Movement of the 1930s, by snapping it in two to create what looks like a dystopian heart.

By way of explaining his preoccupation with symbolism, he says: "I still haven't found a place that I can call home. These are attempts for me to create spaces dealing with architectural details - a way to escape in my mind the places that don't actually exist but have been converted into sculptures."