These eight lighting fixtures are rich in references to the plant, mineral, and animal world, almost like living organisms telling the story of a symbiosis between poetic expression and the technical machine. A re-reading of a noble and ancient material through the lens of design and an experimentation of innovative solutions, often borrowed from other industries, in which high-tech embraces the beauty of glass. Light speaks – it vibrates in these objects that are characterised by their creative and formal imprint but do not hide their functional soul, which is at times mechanical, as they are conceived to represent a new reading of the world of traditional glassmaking in which sources like structures – which are often left in sight – are just as important as the glass itself, a yet unseen design balance between light and material.
In defining this alphabet, which will write the future of Gritti, designer Marc Sadler has made use of his talent of being at once transversal between disciplines and thorough in his many specialisations. It is truly the result of his profound knowledge of materials and his ability to transfer his technological acumen from one field to another. Sadler’s special projects for Gritti are touching in their beauty and at the same time outline a path for development because they are conceived to express an unexpected use of glass by implementing specific systems of creation with an approach that redirects the technical project towards art-design, in a process that is inverse to the tradition of artistic glassmaking.
The exhibition in fact translates the know-how of a historical made in Venice company specialised in working glass according to the Murano culture, which has been recently regenerated thanks to a workers’ buyout which not only relaunched the company but also paved the way for an entirely new corporate path. In fact, beyond the magic of creativity, the company now embraces a ‘way of doing’ things in which executive skill and the millenary art of hand-blown glass are contaminated by the expressive language of a great designer who is not afraid to explore untrodden paths.
Credits:
lighting installations Marc Sadler
set-up and graphic design Franco Achilli with Paola Pellizzi
video screenings Giovanni De Felice
