Among the uncountable number of luminaries exhibiting at Salone last week we find Ronan Bouroullec, who collaborated with Vincent Van Duysen and Wonderglass on “Poetica”: “an evocative project that reimagines glass and paper as vessels for memory and imagination, offering a poetic exploration of materiality and craft.”

The display is comprised of two prominent elements: an arched screen with corresponding pair of perforated tables in transparent glass (Van Duysen), and a blooming constellation of green glass discs, dangling out into the air like a tree unfurling leafy branches, set against geometric glass elements and small ceramic vases.

The creators characterize Poetica as research, rather than “products”. The glass sculptures are conceptual art pieces that evince innovative technique yet mostly conspire to create a mood, elicit an emotion, call on the viewer’s own referential experience in the way they manipulate light, or emulate nature, or create a sense of familiarity that almost-but-not-quite approximates something previously seen or touched.

Regarding technique, the bloom of green illustrates an unorthodox glass-fusing process in which hot glass shards are fused together, creating various degrees of translucency. Bouroullec describes it as a “blurring”: “It emphasizes the transparency of the glass and the fact that it’s blurred using the flowers.”

Van Duysen created his tables using the same technique: shards of glass fused together to create a seamless yet imperfect whole. Regarding the perforations, he says they evoke the timeless interplay of shadow and light: “This is a playful take on translucency versus opacity… that duality between closeness and openness.” With its paradoxical evocations of privacy and exposure, the transparent screen element continues this theme: the play of opposites, the establishment of ambiguity, the internal contradictions at the heart of poetry and Poetica.

Find out more at Wonderglass.