sculputure, exhibition, installation
2025
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In “IRIDESZENZ”, a poetic interplay of light and structure unfolds, guided by the dragonfly, an ancient dweller of waters. Its shimmering wings, charged with iridescence, invite us to consider the unseen entanglements of nature and perception.

Through wing-like forms rendered with Sparxell’s photonic material, the sculpture shows how microstructures reflect light to return a shifting spectrum. Here iridescence is the core: colours turn with the gaze, more than spectacle, an insistence that nature and perception are always in motion.

The dragonfly’s wing becomes an emblem of how fragile architectures of light and matter produce what greets the eye a new, again and again.

Through live microscopy offered within the exhibition, we enter these hidden terrains ourselves. We look into the fine structures of the Sparxell material and of the dragonfly’s wing, finding that nature teaches both the delicacy and the resilience of its patterns.

Material interlude, on Sparxell’s light. Here, color isn’t a substance added, but a structure revealed. Instead of dyes or heavy minerals, Sparxell works with plant-based cellulose, nothing else. As cellulose nanocrystals self-assemble, they twist into helices that catch and return light, structural coloration: colour as an effect of microscopic form, not substance, as with a soap bubble: transparent until structure; then colour. From a chaotic (isotropic) solution to an ordered (cholesteric) state, a pinch of salt steers the pitch: less for reds, more for greens and blues. Colour that does not bleed, because there is no pigment to leak.Performance without the harms, no mica, no titania, no petro-glitter; fully biodegradable, plant-derived. What remains is reflectance: vivid, fade-resistant, usable where pigments, glitters, and sequins once stood.

Nature already speaks this grammar, morpho wings brown in pigment yet electric in structure; Pollia berries and peacock feathers pigmentless and more intense than paint. We borrow that grammar not to imitate nature but to hold it more gently: using nature’s logics, giving something back, and refusing the drift of microplastics that dust the world.

As dragonflies have inhabited water worlds for millions of years-wearing their iridescent wings as signals of a living ecosystem-this work reminds us that our relation to water and to nature is a matter of perception, and of care.

Where art and science meet, a space opens that invites reflection on the invisible bonds between water, light, and life.