MOVING HORIZON Palais de Tokyo

Can a horizon be brought indoors?

Every FLOW[T] carries the same water line. Hung together, the line becomes a horizon. From 2013, WonderGlass asked me to build the rooms where that horizon could be seen: fabric, net, darkness, a bare gallery, so the glass could do the rest.

The first room was in Milan, for the first WonderGlass collection. Before FLOW[T] existed, the founder and I had talked about Venice, a city that is magical and a little mysterious, and how a single chandelier can change a room the same way. FLOW[T] came out of that conversation. So did the room. Narrow, dim passages of stretched net that open into a square, close again, and open into another, the way Venice does. Each designer’s glass waited in one of the squares. I wanted the surprise you feel turning a corner there. There was a circus somewhere in the references, and Cirque du Soleil on the speakers.

The same year, in December, Design Miami. Black walls and a mirror at each end, so that sixteen FLOW[T] became a line with no end. The glass was new too: Night FLOW[T], smoke grey instead of green, made so the water line would read in the dark. The light travelled along the row one piece at a time, then faded back. Between the two Milan rooms came a mesh wall for Maison & Objet and a gallery show at Bensimon, both in Paris.

FOG, a year later, was the same idea turned inside out. White fabric instead of black net, one curving room instead of many, and the glass seen through a haze. Venice in fog: water and air become the same thing.

Then Palais de Tokyo, in 2014. Thirty hand-finished FLOW[T], suspended together in one long room, the light passing slowly from one to the next. People stood by the columns and looked up for a long time.

Each room was a different way of seeing the same line. The glass never changed. The horizon did.