{"id":951091,"date":"2026-11-03T13:00:15","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T13:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/951091\/"},"modified":"2026-11-03T13:00:15","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T13:00:15","slug":"sabine-marcelis-takes-moment-to-reflect-in-first-museum-exhibition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/951091\/","title":{"rendered":"Sabine Marcelis takes moment to reflect in first museum exhibition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sabine Marcelis<\/a> has a knack for creating viral objects, from IKEA\u2019s most-sold light to her mesmerising Candy Cube tables. Now, the designer is revealing the method behind her \u201cmagic\u201d in an exhibition<\/a> at Z\u00fcrich<\/a>\u2018s Museum f\u00fcr Gestaltung.<\/p>\n

Light and Color<\/a> is the first museum show dedicated entirely to Marcelis<\/a>\u2018s work since she founded her studio 15 years ago. <\/p>\n

\"\"Candy cubes tables (above) and Mathmos lava lamps (top) feature in Sabine Marcelis\u2019s first museum exhibition<\/p>\n

In that time, the Rotterdam-based Kiwi has gone from being a student at the Design Academy Eindhoven<\/a> to one of the most prolific and in-demand designers working today.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first time a museum has brought so much of my work together in one place,\u201d Marcelis told Dezeen. \u201cI\u2019m always so preoccupied with what\u2019s next that I don\u2019t like to look back so much, but it\u2019s amazing to have this moment to actually stop and look back for a minute.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels pretty special,\u201d she admitted. <\/p>\n

\"\"Tall Strip was her first-ever mirror<\/p>\n

The show brings together 17 key pieces from the last decade and a half, going as far back as Tall Stripe<\/a> \u2013 the first of many mirrors \u2013 and her signature resin Candy Cubes<\/a>, which first catapulted the designer to international acclaim in 2014.<\/p>\n

But Marcelis is adamant it should not be considered a retrospective. <\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t want the show to feel like a retrospective in the sense of a chronological archive,\u201d she said. \u201cI wanted to select a variety of projects that each show a different way of working with light and colour.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"The No Fear of Glass seats originally stood in the Barcelona Pavilion<\/p>\n

Rather than chronologically, the exhibits are arranged by colour, blending into each other like the soft gradients she favours in works like her curved glass chaise longues for the Barcelona Pavilion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Her favourite materials \u2013 glass, resin and stone \u2013\u00a0recur throughout the exhibition, with carefully placed spotlights showing off the play of reflections and shadows the designer has learned to elicit through years of experimentation.<\/p>\n

A prime example is her Lokum coffee table for Acerbis<\/a>, stacked on top of each other on a curved wall to show the gradients of colour and water-like reflections created when the glass is seen at different angles and levels of illumination.<\/p>\n

\"LightThe Varmblixt \u201cdonut lamp\u201d is IKEA\u2019s best-selling lamp<\/p>\n

There are also two room-scale installations, reminiscent of Yayoi Kusama<\/a>\u2018s Infinity Mirror Rooms, throwing back endless reflections of Marcelis\u2019s viral IKEA \u201cdonut lamp\u201d<\/a> and the towering three-metre-tall Column lava lamp for Mathmos<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For the show\u2019s curator Damian Fopp, these are less about Instagram bait and more about allowing visitors to experience the full visual effect of these objects in real life, rather than through a screen.<\/p>\n

\"LightSeveral Lokum coffee tables are stacked on a curved wall<\/p>\n

\u201cHer work circulated widely as images, but no institution had looked at it as a whole,\u201d he said. \u201cThis also made it interesting to shift the conversation back from online to physical.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we wanted to show what lies behind those calm, effortless images: the testing, prototyping and production that I discovered when I visited her studio in Rotterdam.\u201d<\/p>\n

A mini-documentary and a book commissioned for the exhibition pull back the curtain on what it takes to create these perception-bending pieces with her team.<\/p>\n

\"LightThe exhibition is on show at Z\u00fcrich\u2019s Museum f\u00fcr Gestaltung<\/p>\n

Over the years, these have become more ambitious in scale as well as sustainability, pivoting to 99 per cent biobased resin for her production and creating installations for the likes of Coachella<\/a> and Apple HQ<\/a>, <\/p>\n

But no matter the size of the project, Marcelis says that materials remain her North Star.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wrote a one-sentence summary of what my studio does ten years ago,\u201d she remembered. \u201c\u2018A studio for material, installation and object design. Forever in search of magical moments within materiality and manufacturing processes to create unexpected experiences.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t change that sentence today if I had to make the same summary again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Share<\/p>\n

\n Photography by Umberto Romito and Ivan \u0160uta\n <\/p>\n

Read more<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sabine Marcelis has a knack for creating viral objects, from IKEA\u2019s most-sold light to her mesmerising Candy Cube…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":951092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,460,134,15941,63246,18629,104831,6221,116073],"class_list":["post-951091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-exhibitions","tag-furniture","tag-lighting","tag-sabine-marcelis","tag-switzerland","tag-zurich"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=951091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/951092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=951091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=951091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=951091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}