With Empyrean Suspended, the semi-transparent qualities of resin that have characterized the work of Laurids Gallée in recent years, come back. Last year, the Austrian designer presented a series of monochromatic projects with clear decorative references to what was once the Japanese pictorial school of Kano, without neglecting his own European academic background which includes Design Academy in Eindhoven. In Gallée’s projects, the historical references do not stop exclusively at the Muromachi historical period but proceed to the myths of ancient cosmology from which the designer takes inspiration as a syntactic and metaphorical key for his light designs. There are two different visions of the Empyrean, the first can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, who believed that it was the highest place in the heavens destined to host the element of fire, while the second refers to Christian literature according to which this dimension was the place where the beings of light, the blessed and God, resided. On the basis of these ancient mythological suppositions, Gallée elaborates a lamp, the Empyrean Suspended, that presents itself to the public in a monumental way and is placed by its natural vocation in the highest and most central point of the domestic space evoking a transposition of images that symbolically recall the myth of ancient Greece. That of the Austrian designer is revealing itself as a path made up of continuous experimentation and research that translate into unique projects.
