Geko
Paolo Deganello, Geko 1
Paolo Deganello, Geko 2
Lamps have always had a mainly geometric shape: a hanging opal glass sphere containing a bulb, a reflecting painted aluminium hemi-sphere or a rod that starts from the centre of a square base to support a bulb with a truncated conic opal polycarbonate shield.
Today’s minimalists, like the rationalists and illuminists of the past, appreciate the statement by Galileo: “the universe is written in the language of mathematics and the characters are triangles, circles and other geometric shapes”. And so, respecting the laws of the universe, they reduce everything artificial to geometric figures, because the silent perfection of absolute geometry would seem to contain beauty. I prefer to seek forms that use Mother Nature’s construction logic. For me, today, it is more interesting to understand how a seed changes into the shape of a tree rather than to review the steps involved in transforming the iron, contained in a ferrous stone, into a square, rectangular or circular metal section…
I used the belly of a gecko (Tarentola Mauritanica) that eats mosquitoes and flies dazed by the electric light. I put an electric wire up through the tail to carry current to a cold-light bulb – that saves energy – located above its abdomen, engraved with an orange strip to give a warm reflection to the cold light. To shield the light, I protected it with a torn polycarbonate sheet by Bayer, because it resembles a wing and because some geckoes know how to fly.
Geky, genetic mutation of an electric wire into a flying ceramic lamp produces warm light and even flies. I created two versions – one decorated with the skin of Tarentola, and the other with white blue decorations from Albisola – but I would like to make others.
Paolo Deganello
Geko by Paolo Deganello was prototyped in Albisola (Italy) in 2006 on occasion of the 3rd Biennial of Ceramics in Contemporary Art.
35 x 35 x un fiore
Paolo Deganello, 35 x 35 x un fiore
Paolo Deganello has, first and foremost, designed a vase in the two dimensions of perspective ready to transpose it, just as he designed it, into the third sculptural dimension of ceramics. The literal transfer of the perspective design from a sheet of paper into the third dimension of ceramics creates a vase, which shows off its own deformation caused by perspective illusionism as a conventional and arbitrary process of coding and decoding.
35 x 35 x un fiore by Paolo Deganello was prototyped in Albisola (Italy) on occasion of the travelling exhibition “Changing the world with a vase of flowers”, MUDAC-Museum of Design and Contemporary Applied Arts, Lausanne, 2011; Pierluigi and Natalina Remotti Foundation-City of Camogli, 2010-2011; Italian Cultural Institute of Madrid-Italian Embassy in Spain, 2010.
