You don't have to ascend to the upper floors of SoHo's century-old loft buildings -- where most of the neighborhood's famous art galleries are housed, quietly perched above multinational banks and retail stores—to find yourself immersed in an aesthetic environment that has the power to immediately transport you far away from the chaos of New York City.
At least in the case of Foscarini's Spazio Soho, a showroom of the high-end Italian lighting company on Greene Street in Lower Manhattan, you need only step off the sidewalk.
Inside, you will find a surreal Ames room that simultaneously calls to mind Alice in Wonderland while showcasing several oversize versions of Foscarini's most popular lamps. Known as the "Giants" collection, the series includes such mainstays as Big Bang, Twiggy and Spokes, and together with the space—with its sloped ceiling and floor, and kaleidoscopic paint job— creates a paradoxically disorienting yet welcoming effect.
Outsize "Big Bang," one of several Foscarini mainstays currently on display at the company's Spazio... [+]
Created by the Italian designer Feruccio Laviani, the installation at Spazio Soho is part of a larger campaign of the company's to inspire public discourse around the nature of reality and illusion -- that is, how we define those terms, to what extent they might be subjective and whether they are, in fact, interchangeable.
To that end, the company also launched a "social impact" piece—using the hashtag #foscarini—to encourage photo sharing and discussion via Instagram and other social media outlets. And, adding yet one more dimension, Foscarini hired the artist Gianluca Vasallo to lead a film crew around New York City and ask everyday people to articulate what "reality" and "illusion" mean to them.
The showroom—in its Ames iteration—began as part of New York Design Week and will remain in place at least until late July.
Photo: David Alm
