Oblique & Chevron by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec

Oblique & Chevron by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec express the luminosity of glass, particularly the immersive quality of stained glass. Traditional stained glass—with its faceted surfaces and dazzling colors set in lead frames, which both define and offset the richness of the color—was designed to evoke a sense of magic and wonder among medieval churchgoers. The Bouroullecs bring the same otherworldly and nearly mystical sense to more abstract patterns, delighting in the play of scale, light, and fluidity created by the interaction between pattern and palette. The colors of Oblique & Chevron have been distilled and extracted at a nearly molecular level from eight photographs taken by the Bouroullecs. When overlaid onto the patterns and viewed at a large scale the colors multiply, revealing a fluid and harmonious color landscape. As stained glass is shaped by its lead frames, the colors are shaped and reshaped by the lines of each individual pattern, their density and distribution changing almost imperceptibly. The result is a sense that the glass is almost alive with a delicate pulse, capable of evoking the same sense of wonder as its medieval counterpart.