oskar zieta: reflections at sotheby's vienna

image © designboom

polish designer oskar zieta challenges his audience with a new perspective onto the reality of design: ‘reflections’ is a kaleidoscope that has the ability to enlarge our possibilities of looking at objects while exposing the mystery of vision and understanding.

the playful installation is composed by means of refined boxes, closed from all side walls, decorated by glossy patterns, and reflecting the entrapped objects inside onto their inner surface. the magic boxes have peepholes at different heights and with diverse angles so that the visitors can experience sneak views of what’s inside : the stools by zieta, realized with the fidu technology, are caged inside a trap and haunted by the light.

like entering the world of alice in wonderland, with this new project zieta transforms design into a perception tool and reconstructs a world in which both – objects and materials – are never what they look like. the polish designer holds a magnifying lens towards the reality of design shifting the view and changing perception. the observers become the protagonists: through the peep-holes they can reach just a restricted inside view as the eyes receive a distorted picture of the space and the pattern reflecting on the metal surface giving back a confused image of the furniture piece. can oskar zieta reveal a new, unprecedented and unexpected technique to work with metals? oskar zieta tries to make steel invisible. the designer’s objects, instead of being final products, become the tools with which he can turn this design exhibition into a discovery, a surprise.

the boxes in the show are small architectural constructions that allow us to play with large size tools that reflect the objects in their inside and reveal a whole world behind them. delimitations, fusion of patterns, changing surfaces, and the reflections depend on the chosen metal: stainless steel appears to be colder and copper warmer. (text maria cristina didero)

the exhibition is still on show at sotheby’s until this sunday, october 9, as part of vienna design week 2011.