Draga & Aurel: Affinity in Light
By Sacha Miller
A blown-glass sphere resting on a concrete base eroded by sea salt: the art of Draga & Aurel lies in this encounter, where fragility challenges mass and light seems to emerge from the material itself. From their studio in Como, designer Draga Obradovic and artist Aurel K. Basedow never set out to impose a form: they allow it to take shape.
Their guiding principle sounds like a manifesto: “We do not design the form; we create the conditions for it to appear.” Everything in their work follows from this reversal. Pigmented resin, concrete, polished or oxidised metal and Murano glass are not simply materials used to execute a preconceived design, but partners whose reactions they observe. The designer becomes an orchestrator of phenomena: preparing a reaction, adjusting the heat of the furnace, adding inclusions, then allowing the material to determine the rest.
This year in Milan, at Salone Raritas, the new section of Salone del Mobile dedicated to limited editions, this approach reached a new level. With Affinity in Light, created with Venetian glassmaker Salviati, founded in Murano in 1859, blown glass entered into a dialogue with resin for the first time. Two different timescales meet between furnace and studio: glass retains the memory of fire and the glassmakers’ gestures, while resin captures and diffuses light. As the title suggests, this is more than a collaboration in the usual sense: it is an alignment of perspectives.
The Soffio lighting collection offers the clearest demonstration. Its glass spheres, made using traditional cotisso, pulegoso and crackle techniques, do not seek perfection. They contain bubbles, cracks and inclusions, and it is from these irregularities that their intensity emerges. Light seems to inhabit them, passing through each volume to reveal its texture. Set on compact concrete bases eroded by sea salt, the fragile spheres stand in striking contrast to the weight beneath them. Form arises from the tension between expansion and containment, transparency and density, lightness and mass.
