At local mainstay Tobias Mueller Modern Art, Carmen D’Apollonio presents a series of ceramic lamps that look like they have personalities.
The forms are hand-built in an experimental way. Parts of these lamps lean, tilt, and bulge in unexpected directions. D’Apollonio treats her surface glaze the way a sculptor handles texture, not just as a finish, but as a way of articulating a form, such as adding emphasis to a curve.
The lamps vary considerably from piece to piece. Some emit a dim, ambient glow through porcelain shapes, while others are more sculptural, drawing attention to proportion over light output. There’s a streak of humor in her works, too: one lamp’s shade sits at a pronounced tilt, like a hat worn at a wrong angle; another has a base that curves and rests rather than stands.
Born in Zürich, D’Apollonio came to ceramics after a decade as an art director in film and several years as an assistant to artist Urs Fischer.