Hector Serrano

Spanish born Serrano has already exhibited for two years running at the Milan furniture fair and was a finalist at this year’s Oxo/ Peugeot Design Awards. His main show project is the Superpatata lamp, a salt-filled latex balloon containing a compact fluorescent bulb which can be manipulated, squashed and squeezed into different forms and intensities of light. Superpatata acts as a lamp, but can function as a pillow or, when squeezed, as an anti-stress device. A low budget production means the Superpatata could be manufactured at a modest price, and it will be interesting to follow its future shelf life since Droog Design has snapped up the design, included it in its Milan show this year and will be producing it in the near future. Serrano’s other project is the Top Secret lamp, a bare neon stick twirled in a cloud of acetate strips that have been passed through a shredding machine. Serrano claims he is interested in taking materials such as polyester film, industrial lights and even the humble coarse quality of salt and ‘placing it in another context’. Another future project includes a drinking bottle made from Spanish white terracotta, which he has designed with his Spanish course peers Alberto Martinez and Eduardo Martinez-Escolano. From the course Serrano has learnt ‘to believe in yourself. To stop and question: is this interesting, does it add something?’