designed by Ron Arad, 2001, manufactured by Ron Arad Studio, London, for The Gallery Mourmans, Maastricht, fiberglass, polyester, white finish, diameter approx.. 100 cm. (DRAX)

Lit.:
J. Pavitt, BRILLIANT. LIGHTS AND LIGHTINGS, London 2004, pp. 22/23 – Ron Arad: No Discipline, cat. Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, The MOMA, New York 2008/2009, pp. 194-195

Provenance:
private ownership, Austria, purchased from The Gallery Mourmans in 2001

From the limited edition of 50 marketed by The Gallery Mourmans, Maastricht. Presented for the first time as part of the Furniture Fair in Milan in the exhibition “Delight in Dedark” of the gallery Gio Marconi.
The I. P. C. O. (Inverted Pinhole Camera Obscura) light functions according to the principle of a camera obscura. The bundled light passes through a multitude of pinholes, projecting the light pattern of a “wall paper” onto the surroundings.

“I. P. C. O’s (inverted pinhole camera obscura) – these objects are really reversed camera obscuras, multi-punctured inverted pinhole cameras. The room is dark – inside the sphere there is the burning filament of an incandescent light bulb – each pinhole lets through a projection of one view of that filament – the walls of the room get ‘wallpapered’ with an omnidirectional glowing array of views of the filament. Although standard light bulb filaments are beautiful, it was difficult to resist the temptation to tamper with the filaments to produce words and ‘sketches’. When the filament bulb is replaced with super-bright mini-pixel boards instead of static squiggles, we get scrolling sentences or images projected through each pinhole. Every new pinhole drilled in the object provides a further projection. The pixel board experiment was also carried out on a Big Easy chair, where its base was punctured to project a ‘carpet’ of scrolling sentences on the floor around it.” (The Gallery Mourmans)