In Karim Rashid’s own words:
I believe
that we could be living in an entirely different
world - one that
is full of real contemporary inspiring objects, spaces, places.
Now design is not about solving problems, but about the betterment
of our lives poetically, aesthetically, experientially, sensorially,
and emotionally. My real desire is to see people live in the modus
of our time, to participate in the contemporary world, and to release
themselves from nostalgia, antiquated traditions and the meaningless.
We should be conscious and attune with this world in this moment.
If human nature is to live in the past - to change the world is
to change human nature.
Based on iconic shapes that I have developed over almost 20 years
I created a crafted system of certain meaningful
icons and colours that
speak about my interpretation of the spirituality of the digital
age – of the information age and of the ever shrinking global
phenomena. Symbols speak universally – they are interpretive,
they are compositional, and they are totemic. Historically the
notion of capturing and documenting the world figuratively and
realistically was a record of our time prior to the advent of photography
and abstraction. Art has crossed into very extreme and diverse
territory in order to retain a raison d’etre in the age of
ubiquitous imagery. We can morph a new world and realize our extreme
imaginations and dreams. The digital age, which really has no original,
is a construct of binary notation and is data that can go on forever
in its exactitude with no original. But hand sculpture is original
like the work done by Bitossi for years – I always respected
and loved the work of Londi, Sottsass, and the preciousness of
the transformed clay that this company produced. It is made from
the first mold – cast in sacred fragility. This symbolik
collection of my iconic world, of symbols, shapes, motifs, and
language in a certain form or material or place that creates the
potent moment of originality and time that signifies and documents
the period I call the digipop era – the era of imago, of
sign, a physicality of the virtuality. I could develop forms that
had never been ever produced in history and I could animate them
and forever vary their properties, surfaces, finishes and colours.
These compositions are forms of communicating in the 2-dimensional
ways of mapping my dreams and fantasies. Here these totems, bowls,
vases, are an eclectic combination of my love for the digital age,
for digitalis."
....from an essay by Karim Rashid |
