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14-19 aprile 2015 / via Ventura, 5 / Lambrate, Milano
As Philippe Daverio wrote, “the secret to the design ability of Catellani is that there is no creativity unless the spirit is playful.”
It is with this spirit that Catellani decided to illuminate paper, in order to savour, through a thin sheet of rice paper, the sensations that can be created with a small LED.
The Japanese, people of great determination, high ethical standards and great respect, although possessing the world’s highest technology, state that they build the future while looking at the past.
It almost seems like Enzo Catellani thought of them with his discreet gesture of using rice paper and relighting the candle. 2015 is also the International Year of Light and M. Inguscio, Chairman of the National Institute for Metrology Research, declared, “understanding what light is has allowed us to understand the laws of nature”. Perhaps this is the meaning behind the decision to propose several “special pieces” that lead us back to nature. Moon River, realised with a handmade steel pipe, slit and shaped by hand, where water flows with the sound of a technological stream.
Luna nel Pozzo represents a concept, not a lamp. Light becomes matter. An incredible cascade of hanging gold discs, each one lit by a small LED, which recalls a sky full of shooting stars. On the side a pure gold disc lit by three thins rods, each containing a small LED.
An object of 1999 is also proposed: La macchina che fabbrica le lampadine piccole, that reveals the mystery of how small light bulbs are made. Then, a tribute to Isamu Noguchi, famous Japanese artist, and to his capacity to create great expressions using the simplicity of rice paper. In front of a mirror wall, numerous thin rods, with a LED covered by a sheet of rice paper, transmit serenity and the sense of the value of the past.
A numbered and limited series of luminous sculptures reflects on the white wall a sort of Chinese shadows through the LED, technological target of the third millennium. All side-by-side with a series of candleholders, almost enveloped in a gold colour paper on which the flame seems to reflect.
The ‘present’ is the latest Lederam collection, which was presented at Light+Building in Frankfurt in 2013, that has now been improved and perfected technically.
