FOSCARINI
Metaphysica

Metaphysica is an installation designed by Carlo Ninchi and Vittorio Locatelli, founders of  Oneroom gallery, in collaboration with Italian lighting company Foscarini.  Metaphysica  is inspired by a philosophy that helps us understand complex ideas relating to everyday life; whether it is between space and time, mind and matter or the world between the subconscious and conscious. Light plays a part in this mystery that goes beyond the world of nature to draw on a higher, some may say spiritual, or transcendental dimension.  As you navigate your way through this four-storey Victorian warehouse, in the heart of Shoreditch,  you will uncover a light show which combines the latest Foscarini Mix&Match system, alongside brand new lighting products seen for the first time in the UK. Foscarini’s impressive and extraordinary designs will light the way, observe traditional craft skills, such as handblown glass, combined with the latest lighting technology.

The Oneroom exhibition takes inspiration from the Methaphisical Painting movement developed at the beginning of Twentieth Century by Giorgio De Chirico, soon followed by a group of Italian painters, at the base of which, are the two concepts of Enigma and Melancholy. In particular it derives from the many modern re-readings that have come in recent times, among which of the almost literal quote of De Chirico’s paintings in the official video for Loving The Alien by David Bowie (1984), the Andy Warhol paintings series on De Chirico (Rome 1982) or the literal reconstruction of the De Chirico space of Francesco Vezzoli, in Turin in 2012 and again in London in 2017.

On the First floor the Foscarini collection of Gem, Gregg and Rituals lie on the stage just as abstract glass elements, not yet lamps, abandoned on an inclined plane that derives from the celebrated “Le Muse inquietanti” (the disturbing muses), De Chirico’s absolute masterpiece.

On the Second floor, the whole lamp collection is shown in all its possibilities, floor, wall/ceiling and table versions, as physical objects that inhabit a three-dimensional metaphysical theatrical space, made of minimal arch architectures that the visitor can cross.

While on the Third floor a selection of Foscarini’s novelties will be presented for the first time to an English audience

See light as you have never seen it before.

14 May - 22 September 2019