Coleção Astral Light Sculptures
The Astral Collection was devised to bring together various unique sculptural elements into pieces that constitute a singular set of lighting fixtures. These lamps result from an innovative constructive approach that engages distinctive materials and meticulous craftwork.
The lamps in the Astral Collection are made from LED lighting elements and stacked second-hand lamp shades and glassware set on concrete bases. Their composition renders a poetic narrative introduced early in their design.
The inspiration for the Coleção Astral came from a damaged light fixture. This incident showed me a valuable opportunity for creation based on intuition and experimentation, further developed with the idea of reuse, transformation, re-imagining and revival, all to be undertaken through craftwork intervention within an innovative context.
The Coleção Astral is about no boundaries between old and new, high-tech and low-tech or any aesthetic reference. It is about creative freedom and meticulous constructive determination.
When I first started pondering the Coleção Astral and envisioning the potential design of each piece, I imagined a playful movement of vertical waves attained through the assembly of pieces to create a continuous flow, while at the same time rejecting symmetry and rigor.
All lamp shades or glassware used in the Coleção Astral’s light sculptures are ready-made ones found components otherwise commonly available in vintage stores; none of them was made specifically for use in this project. The lamp shades and glassware of different shapes are second-hand, some are even slightly chipped or splintered and the bases are cement vases set upside down. For me, the major challenge was to secure stability for the stacked lamp shades – an issue resolved with the proper arrangement of components along the piece’s structural axle.
In this series my intention was to render the zeitgeist concept through the combination of elegant and flowing design forms and lighting function. The composition reveals aesthetic references and freedom stripped off boundaries between past and present.
Leo, Coroa Boreal, Ara, Lyra, Via Láctea, Serpens, Hydra, Virgo, Ursa Menor are the light sculptures featured here at this time. They comprise the first collection of a series to come.
The name Coleção Astral came up from the constellations of the celestial sphere in which stars are grouped into compositions of infinite possibilities, in which singularities are also infinite.
The observation of Astral Collection pieces takes the spectator on a pleasant visual trip of a lighting fixture that is not only functional but also produces sensorial impressions.
It was completed on 9 Abril 2018 for the opening of the SP Arte exhibition.
