Bina Baitel

recently opened a solo exhibit of her lamps at the NextLevel Gallery in Paris. Trained as an architect, Baitel is concerned with "the hybridization of objects"-Skins illustrates this aesthetic and philosophical cross-pollination beautifully. Part of six lamps showing at NextLevel, Skins lets its shade spill into other categories: the lamp's leather shade literally overflows into the surrounding space. The resulting lamp/sculpture/rug creates "an entirely new formal concept, the skin is no longer just an envelope but the essence itself of the object. These leather excrescences thus bestow a territory that gives materiality's form to the luminous trajectory." Light gets embodied in the shade, and its cast gets emblematized by the "spilled" leather. Although highly conceptual, Skins uses high-quality French handcraft in its production.

Skins. Designed by Bina Baitel.

The use of leather also makes another statement-about the living and the dead. After all, leather is itself a skin. Baitel's Skins "encourage the viewer to touch them in a equal game of attraction and repulsion"-something that Joseph Starr wrote about earlier in his review of Kyle Bunting's Hair on Hide rugs. With Skins, we seem to have harnessed the power of light while domesticating the wild: the overflowing lamp is a testament to our desire to control our surroundings. And I'm not the only one who thinks so-NextLevel explains in their press release that Skins "hold a sensual power, breed a desire for physical ownership."

Via Arbitare.