Italy, 1975/1985, glazed earthenware, height 30 cm, length 80 cm, depth 20 cm. (DRAX)

A unique specimen.

Lit.:
cf. UFO Story. From Radical Architecture to Global Design, Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pezzi, Florence, 2013 Provenance:
property of the artist

“The idea for this lamp came to me in 1975 in the study at Piazza del Limbo in Florence, which was called ‘Laboratorio Casa ANAS’. Its implementation with glazed ceramic was especially laborious and was completed in 1985. In 1986, it was displayed at the exhibition entitled ‘Abitare il tempo’ in Verona. This item is a unique piece made by hand by Lapo Binazzi (UFO), then fired and painted by the same in the workshop of Alessio Sarri in Sesto Fiorentino. The idea for this lamp was born from Lapo Binazzi’s interest in the streets and motorways which – along with ANAS (the Italian national roads authority), electric service masts, gas pipelines, and other services that are visible in the landscape – represent the plethora of infrastructure that would transform Italian society in those years and which is known as ‘tertiarisation process’.
In the case of motorway restaurants known as ‘autogrill’ in Italy, consumerism merges with the automobile journey motif. The ‘Autogrill’ lamp represents an arch bridge consisting of an arm covered in a sleeve, through the openings of which light emanates from two light-bulbs. The ‘poetic’ vision of this artefact is combined with a style that could be defined as post-human and also occurs in the works of other designers, such as Gaetano Pesce. When this work was still just raw earth, two fingers broke off from the hand. Their fragments were fired and painted separately, then glued and plastered along the suture line in order to cover the ‘wounds’. The photographs in the catalogue of the exhibition in Verona are by Maurizio Marcato. The lamp is reproduced on the cover. An image inside the catalogue shows Lapo Binazzi holding the lamp, using one of his own creations, as has long been his custom, for an improvised performance. In this case, too, the performance should, in the intention of its author, counterbalance the immobility of the object and establish a dialogue or close confrontation between the artist and his creation. A further development of the idea at the origin of this lamp are the ‘vassoi autostrada’ (motorway trays), open to multiple interpretations, as centrepieces on long tables.”
(Lapo Binazzi (UFO), Florence 2017)

When still a student of architecture in Florence, Lapo Binazzi founded the group UFO in 1967 together with Carlo Bacchi, Patrizia Cammeo, Riccardo Foresi, and Titti Maschietto. Having propagated open form and adopted a consistent anti-consumerist attitude, UFO is considered the most radical manifestation of Italian “disegno radicale”, which included three further architectural collectives advocating a similar approach, namely Archizoom, Superstudio, and Gruppo 9999. Under the spell of Umberto Eco’s philosophy, Florence was then the centre of radically new architectural and design concepts that viewed the environment and society from a different angle. Lapo Binazzi was one of the most unconventional exponents of the movement, and his concepts always stood out for their ironically-reflective approach and surprising formal solutions.

„They were young, mad, and on a revolutionary mission. For one of them, the battle for the soul of design is far from finished.
(Lee Marshall, 2016, about Lapo Binazzi)

© Maurizio Marcato