Hot wax is poured into the bucket it solidifies within the fissures and around the wick. He and his team first place a wick into a bucket of broken ice. Arbel has even made wax candles, using a process adapted from a child’s kitchen craft. He has fused glass and copper-which apparently have similar coefficients of expansion-to make vessels in which layers of gleaming mesh are encased within layers of translucent color. He has created metal objects by electroplating a core artifact (any old bolt will do) several hundred thousand times, allowing the deposit of metal to proliferate into irregular amoebic forms. For example, he has developed a new way of forming concrete, by pouring it gradually into a wooden armature lined with fabric the result is a spreading, treelike pier with fluted folds. Often, he invents clever “hacks” of existing processes. What his myriad undertakings have in common is a way of thinking that is rooted in materials based experimentation. He maintains a discrete architectural practice, and is active in numerous other disciplines under the heading of OAO Works (the acronym stands for Omer Arbel Office). Housed in a former 1896 courthouse, this space serves as a test site for new ideas.Ħ4 Beeswax Candle, made of molten beeswax cast in ice, 2017.Īrbel’s other arenas of activity are somewhat harder to pin down. Since 2015, Arbel has also operated Bocci 79, a showroom and archive, in Berlin, where a wide range of finished objects and prototypes can be seen. Fabrication is done in Vancouver, entirely by hand, in one of the largest privately operated hot shops anywhere in North America. The most conventional is a lighting and glassware company called Bocci, which produces commissioned installations as well as objects for retail. These days his output is split into several streams. Born in Jerusalem, he immigrated to Canada as a teenager, and has lived and worked there since. But for him, the city has been an ideal support system. Were he not up in Vancouver, it’s probable that Arbel would be much better known. Though he’s an unassuming and approachable fellow, he fairly bursts with ideas, producing objects like a wheel throws off sparks. Touring that attic space with him this past spring, I felt as if I were paying a visit to his brain. And they might have been right to worry, for Arbel’s energies seem uncontainable. It was ultimately not accepted by the curators, who feared the design would overmatch the artworks they planned to display. Along one wall is an astounding foam construction, originally developed for a museum exhibition. Architectural models lie strewn about, not exactly in disarray, but not all that well organized either. There are lamps and glass objects packed and ready to ship. AT THE TOP OF OMER ARBEL’S multi-story studio in Vancouver is an all-purpose space.
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