Tag Archives: Light

Eye On Design: Foscarini’s Light Bulb Series By James Wines / SITE

Inversion Room Inside
Immersive Reverse Room Installation at Foscarini Showroom Featuring The Light Bulb Series (All Photos By Gail)

NYCxDESIGN is New York City’s annual showcase of all things Design-related! Must-attend events include a Saturday evening (May 19th) filled with parties hosted by dozens of SoHo showrooms, where you can get caught up on all the latest trends in furniture and lighting while eating and drinking yourself into a stupor. It’s all kinds of crazy fun. We saw a ton of cool stuff this year, but I think we had the best time at one of the evening’s early stops, the showroom of Italian Lighting experts, Foscarini, which is located on Greene Street right in the center of all the hot design action!

Reverse Room Full View

On this evening, Foscarini were celebrating the launch of The Light Bulb Series, by Architect/Designer James Wines in association with SITE— the architecture and environmental arts studio that he founded in New York City in 1970.

Light Bulb Series
The Light Bulb Series on Display in the Foscarini Showroom

The Light Bulb Series is a designer art-house collection consisting of a limited and numbered edition of pieces – based on a reflection of the light bulb as an archetype, with its typical bulb-like shape, produced in a series of surprising provocations, as follows:

White Light

Black Light

Melting Light

Candle Light

Plant Light

James Wines translates this reflection with explorations that revolve around the principal themes that have always guided his architectural research. These are inversion, dissolution, nature, all those statuses of “architectural flaw” which make it possible to rethink reality, giving it shape and then at the same time breaking down its boundaries. Wines’s light bulbs are in turn melted, broken, inverted, turned black, and invaded by nature. A propensity towards experimentation, doing better but also doing differently, which has always animated Foscarini as well.

Plant Light and Black Light

White Melting Candle Light

Reverse Room

The focal point of the party however was Wine’s Reverse Room installation, which he designed together with his daughter Suzan Wines, both of whom were in attendance for the evening.

Reverse Room Table

The endlessly Instagrammable Reverse Room was devised to emphasise the surreal quality of these experimentations: in a dark-walled room, upside down and slanted, with monochrome tables and chairs, the table lamps blink down from the ceiling, whereas the suspension lamps peep out from the floor.

Reverse Room Suspended Bulbs

It is an invitation to think of a world, of design, and therefore of what is possible, where it is always imaginable to shed light differently.

Light Bulb Series Card

Visit Foscarini’s website at This Link for more information on The light Bulb Series and other Foscarini Lighting Designs!

Plant Light and Black Light

John McCracken at David Zwirner

Installation View
Installation View Left to Right: Galaxy, Rhythm, Flare. (All Photos By Gail )

Hey, do you enjoy the work of legendary minimalist artist John McCracken? I sure do. According to the obituary published in the New York Times when McCracken passed away in 2011 at the age of 76, “he was one of the few artists affiliated with the [Minimalist] movement who did not object to its name, and who made most of his work by hand: sanding and polishing his enamel, lacquer or resin surfaces until their colors achieved a flawless and reflective perfection.” Continue reading John McCracken at David Zwirner

Modern Art Monday: Dan Flavin, Untitled (to the “Innovator” of Wheeling Peachblow)

Untitled to the Innovator of Wheeling Peachblow
All Photos By Gail

Dan Flavin (1933 – 1996) began to use commercially available fluorescent light tubes in 1963. This work marries color and light, bringing them into three dimensions. In dialogue withe surrounding space, the vertical and horizontal tubes both illuminate and obscure the corner — a location not typically used for displaying art. Though the emitted light transcends its physical encasement and transforms the surrounding space, Flavin avoided characterizing his work as sublime and instead considered his light installation as “situations” or proposals. “One might not think of light as a matter of fact, but I do,” he stated. “And it is…as plain and open and direct an art as you will ever find.”

Untitled to the Innovator of Wheeling Peachblow

Photographed in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.

Pink Thing of The Day: Victoria’s Secret PINK Dog

Pink Dog
All Photos By Gail

This spotted-dog is the brand mascot of PINK, the Victoria’s Secret line of clothing and lingerie that is marketed to college age (and younger) ladies. He’s pretty cute.

Pink Dog

In dimmer light, you can see that this little guy really lights up!

Photographed in the window of the Victoria’s Secret store at the corner of Broadway and Prince Street in NYC.

Plasma Sphere Nightlight

Plasma Ball Night Light

Talk about an Oh Wow factor! Remember when full-sized, tabletop globe versions of these things were all the rage and everybody had one? I still have mine! I love that someone made a nightlight version, so you can have a mini acid flashback every time you get up at night to use the bathroom!

This vivid nightlight plugs directly into the wall and radiates with swirling colored light. When the switch is turned on and the bulb is touched, the internal currents are guided to fingertips and dramatically twist and undulate around the bulb’s interior. Made of glass, xenon glass, and ABS plastic.

Details:

  • Size: 7″x 3″
  • Standard 120V plug in
  • Not compatible with 220

Get yours for just $18 at Fancy Dot Com!