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ISABELLA Lobkowicz
 

NEW[BLOSSFELD]TON


 

1988 Milan / Italy, lives and works in London
 

An Italian engineer, scientist and designer. Her drawings of chairs have been published in the book ‘Almost 100 chairs for 100 people’ (Moleskine, 2016 ) and exhibited alongside Andrea Branzi and Ettore  Sottsass’s works.
She spends most of her awake time working as a research scientist and authoring scientific publications.
I grew up in the Italian countryside. During the last four months, because of the worldwide pandemic, I was fortunate to go back to nature. Little by little I trained my eyes and I rediscovered shapes and patterns that were long not part of my visual sphere. I immersed myself in the daily routines, in the subtle mutations of blooming roses, in their scents so different one another. I observed those shapes. I have always been fascinated by forms. Why is a shape beautiful?
Why does it have to be that way? 

I felt happy when I discovered that there’s no explanation for everything: some things are just beautiful. In my childhood home I also stumbled upon an old book by Karl Bloosfeldt, and something got started...
 



Group Exhibitions 
2015 Vue d’ensemble, Great Design Gallery, Paris
2014 Have a seat, Great Design Gallery, Paris


Publications 
2014 – 2020 (ongoing) https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=OvEtY0IAAAAJ [science]
2016 Almost 100 chairs for 100 people, Moleskine [art/graphics]

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I grew up in the Italian countryside. During the last four months, because of the worldwide pandemic, 
I was fortunate to go back to nature.
Little by little I trained my eyes and I rediscovered shapes and patterns that were long not part of my 
visual sphere. I immersed myself in the daily routines, in the subtle mutations of blooming roses, in 
their scents so different one another. I observed those shapes. I have always been fascinated by forms. 
Why is a shape beautiful? Why does it have to be that way? I felt happy when I discovered that there’s 
no explanation for everything: some things are just beautiful.
In my childhood home I also stumbled upon an old book by Karl Bloosfeldt, and something got 
started…
‘New[blossfeld]ton’ (2020 – ongoing) is a collage work based on the fashion photographs of Helmut 
Newton (1920 – 2004) and on the botanical photographs of Karl Blossfeldt (1865 – 1932). 
By juxtaposing the works of the two photographers, I want to highlight the plastic formality of the 
botanical world, which is much closer to the human aesthetics than we might recognize at a first 
observation. While the human world of Helmut Newton is glossy, sexy and provocative, the quiet and 
static photographs of Karl Blossfeldt take us to a peaceful universe of still meditation and introspection. 
New[blossfeld]ton shows that these two worlds can and should reinforce each other. It shows a possible 
coexistence of human superegos and nature. Newton’s models become intricate icons and protectors of 
an ephemeral, natural world, in which nude bodies are wrapped in dresses made of Asclepias Syriaca 
and Isabella Rossellini succumbs to the charms of a grey thistle flower. 
New[blossfeld]ton is about beauty and form, about the extraordinary in the ordinary, about seeing reality 
with different eyes and about remembering that we are nature.

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