Canadian designer Omer Arbel and contemporary manufacturer Bocci will reveal 28, a materially explorative light installation at Spazio Rosanna Orlandi during Milan Design Week, April 2010. The exhibition showcases the results of Omer Arbelís radical experimentation with blown glass technique and composition.

In Omer Arbel's words: I am interested in exploring the unexpected, but in retrospect obvious aspects of the world around us. In this case we inverted the basic technique of glass blowing. If you can blow air into glass and achieve astonishing results, it follows that you should be able to suck air out too and achieve equally interesting forms.

28 consists of haphazardly composed blown glass pendants, with built in halogen/ LED lighting nodes, arranged in hexagonal chandeliers of differing lengths. The fabrication technique employed and refined by Arbel ensures that each pendant produced is completely unique in form from every other pendant - the pieces are shaped more or less by accident during production. The chandelier is height adjustable, and can range in size from 3 to 19 pendants organized in a central sculptural configuration, or in an ambient composition.

At Rossana Orlandi's space, Arbel has nestled an overwhelming number of these pieces together to create a cohesive environment with its own rules of perspective, movement, and composition. The floor is treated with a continuous mirror, reflecting perfectly the constellation of chandeliers above - with the visitor is suspended in limbo in between. As the viewer approaches the room, the mirrored surface of the walkable floor reflects the chandeliers above, modulating the space with both direct and indirect light. Entering, one becomes completely immersed in a subtle brightness that creates a powerful phenomenological situation. The installation is intended to create a separate, highly defined environment, separate from the surrounding world around us. In this contained environment, the qualities of the new 28 chandelier become tangible, and are manipulated and composed to communicate an emotional / intuitive imperative

The Series 28 chandelier has, despite its slick and elegant finish, an industrial strength and heritage. The chandelier is made using a special glass blowing technique, where air is repeatedly blown in and then sucked out of intermittently heated and then cooled glass. The result is a distorted sphere in which a small LED (12V, 0.3W) or halogen (12V, 20W) light is placed. The light from these tiny bulbs projects through the complexity of the blown glass shapes to create pools of light and shadow on the surrounding walls, ceiling and floor which have an almost aquatic sensibility.

14 – 19.4.2010
Series 28 chandelier by Omer Arbel for Bocci
Spazio Rosana Orlandi, via Matteo Bandello 14/16