First unveiled at this year's Salone del Mobile design fair in Milan at Galleria Giò Marcon, the LavaPrisms Project is a collaboration between German painter Kerstin Brätsch and United Brothers, an art collective spearheaded by siblings Ei and Tomoo Arakawa.
Ei Arakawa has previously made a name for himself as a performance artist; a 2012 residency at Tate Modern's The Tanks saw him draw inspiration from the radical works of the Gutai group, Japan's first post-war art collective. Somewhat surprisingly, his brother Tomoo owns and manages several tanning salons in their family hometown Fukushima. It was the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster that brought United Brothers and Kerstin Brätsch first together.
"Our actual collaboration started from a site of trauma and was a way for us to rediscover light’s power", says Arakawa. "As a painter, Kerstin deals in various ways with the idea of light, and its artificial construction, and as a tanning salon-owner Tomoo is surrounded by the imitation of sunlight on a regular basis. Via performative activations with Ei, the three of us are able to elaborate on the theme of light in various ways and iterations".
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The result of their latest collaboration, created upon invitation by Max Mara, is a pair of sunglasses limited to 1000 models worldwide. For sale via Max Mara boutiques, their design and fabrication is inspired by volcanoes and lava as the source of glass. The resulating MM KB/UB is produced by eyewear specialist Safilo. "We thought we could emphasise this connection between the sun and the eyes in our collaboration with Max Mara".
So how did the design come about? First, the trio embarked on an ambitious tour of site visits, exploring lava first-hand by travelling to remote volcanoes. Their tour included the Hawaiian archipelago.
"We went on a long and extensive Lava-hike on Big Island in Hawaii - that experience was quite intense and beautiful. We were hiking out to the active lava ocean entry and discovered how the lava flows and we witnessed the power of the Halemaumau Crater in the Kilauea Volcano.
"Walking on lava is like walking on glass. Being so close to active lava seemed like we were observing a giant breathing mammal".
The three creatives then travelled to Padua in the North Italian Veneto region to see how Safilo could make their ideas concrete. "The site was very impressive. It was also good to meet not only the designers and production managers but also the various artisans creating sunglasses on site".
This was just the third time Max Mara has give carte blanche to creatives to design a pair of sunglasses; the 2018 MM KB/UB pair features oversized rimless lenses while choice details recall the artists' volcanic inspiration. There are soft rubber temples coated in a material derived from natural stone, a thin red lave-line hides by the right temple. "Symbolically we were thinking about glass and its equivalent matter; lava, as well as energy, light, and natural forces when we chose the materials for the sunglasses".
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