MagazineDiscover Karl Zahn's Elegant Illuminated SculpturesThe artist and designer unveils his latest lighting pieces

By Hannah Martin

January 24, 2022

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Courtesy of Casa Perfect

“I’ve always felt really comfortable making art,” says Karl Zahn, who studied industrial design at RISD and worked for a decade in the studio of lighting veteran Lindsey Adelman. So when the Brooklyn-based talent went solo in 2019, after years of making his own pieces after hours, his impulse was to create kinetic light-as-a-feather sculptures—and set them aglow. But he didn’t want to just stick an antiquated bulb on something so elegant. Instead Zahn, who had spent much of his career exploring the intricacies of electronics, delved into the infinite possibilities of LEDs. For his new body of work, the star of a solo show at New York City’s Casa Perfect gallery, Zahn embedded itty-bitty LEDs into forms he calls “drawings” or “shapes in space that are activating the rest of the architecture.” With the flip of a switch, a constellation dances across the powder-coated metal of chandeliers and lamps. “A globe light is just a concentration of LEDs,” muses Zahn of the bulb shape that has remained more or less the same since its inception. “I wanted to take that, explode it into its components, and then use those elements of illumination the same way I might use paint or a brush.” karlzahn.com