ExtraSalone Museo

Lighting is a significant chapter in Kartell's corporate history that, on the occasion of the Salone del Mobile 2023, is told through the temporary exhibition "Luce Viva" set up in the central space on the ground floor of the Kartell Museo in Noviglio. An installation that invites the public to discover 25 of Kartell's most interesting lamps, from the past and present, inserted in a sinuous path where history and contemporaneity meet to reveal some of the best designed and most poetic objects in the history of light design. The mingling of past and present, history and actuality, is one of the constants of the Kartell Museum's cultural offer. Thanks to its being a corporate museum of a living company, it has the opportunity to tell Kartell's story from a privileged point of view, i.e. by drawing on the objects of its historical collection, consisting of about 8,000 pieces, and on as many contemporary objects in which the heart of the values, of research and industrial production, that have always constituted the company's identity can be found. And it is precisely from the theme of the poeticity of light, which expresses beauty and generates emotion, that research began for the realisation of the 'Luce Viva' exhibition, which develops in five sections investigating the theme of light design, from the point of view of emotion and function. Curated by Elisa Storace, with a design project by Studio Laviani, the exhibition shows, in the first section "Light that reveals", two small contemporary lamps introduce the philosophical meaning of light; in the section "Light that illuminates", the theme of lamps that are at the service of man is investigated, with new functions obtained by innovative technical solutions; in the next section, 'Light that illuminates', light becomes the protagonist, through materials and colour; and in the section 'Light that narrates', lamps that decorate, through textures and wavy surfaces are examined; finally, in the section 'Living light', a single lamp is exhibited, which brings us back to the metaphorical theme and ideally closes the exhibition.