Draga & Aurel showcases iridescent resin explorations at the Rossana Orlandi Gallery

Draga & Aurel's work moves between two dimensions: art and design, precision and instinct, matter and light. Pensieri Riflessi (Reflected Thoughts) is an installation that will be revealed at the Rossana Orlandi Gallery, exploring this tension through transparencies, layering and chromatic mutations, transforming the space into a fluid scenography—a stage of overlapping perceptions. During Milan Design Week 2025, Pensieri Riflessi is an invitation to immerse oneself in colour and light, lose oneself in transparencies and details and discover another language.

Rescue Me

Rediscover, recompose and redesign. Draga & Aurel's Rescue Me series heightens the art of recycling, taking it beyond the simple reinterpretation of vintage items. In a 'circular creation' process, where nothing is lost, the artists work on fragments of once discarded furniture, which today gain a new meaning by tracing a line between memory and contemporaneity.

The product designs will be displayed at the Rossana Orlandi Gallery in Milan, Italy, during the design week. Rescue Me is a spinoff of Heritage, the upcycling collection that Draga & Aurel, founded by Draga Obradovic and Aurel K. Basedow, began in 2003, which reinterprets and transforms vintage furniture designs from the 1950s to 1980s into one-off artistic pieces using resin, the couple's signature material. The 'orphaned' components of those items are now taking the leading role: sideboard cabinets, drawers from old wardrobes and bookcase modules separated from their original frame are put together and rebuilt, thus forming a completely new identity.

The resin, in its array of colours, amplifies the sense of depth and converts the surfaces into tactile paintings. Bold and vibrant fluorescent accents dictate the rhythm and push the vintage item outside its temporal dimension. Transparent Lucite frames suspend the volumes, giving them the utmost visual lightness. 

"Rescue Me isn't just recycling—it's a declaration. In a world that consumes and forgets, we want to give dignity to the incomplete and a voice to what no longer seems valuable", say the product designers. The result is a series of lighting design works in which the past is woven into the present, proving that any object can still have something new to say. This is an ode to transformation and an invitation to look for the hidden potential in what surrounds us.

Phebe

Phebe, Draga & Aurel's new family of pendant lamps, fits perfectly into the Transparency Matters collection and will also be presented during the design festival. "In 2023, at the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault collection in Paris, we stumbled upon the universe of Mike Kelley. His work on Kandor—a resin city hanging amid memory and fiction—left a permanent mark," share the lighting designers.

"His floating architecture, immersed in an atmosphere suspended between dreams and reality, deeply resonated with our course of research, pushing us to explore new forms and expressive languages. The Phebe lamps are not simply light sources but vibrant entities that transform and interact with the space," they add.

The name of the Phebe lamps comes from the Greek word meaning "bright and luminous", evoking an ethereal and magnetic presence that spreads through the space with a playful coloured glow and surprising transparency. Made by hand in Draga & Aurel's workshop in Como, the lamp designs consist of two disks with an adjustable tilt to diffuse the light with variable intensity. The upper disk, made from Lucite, is thin and bright, while the lower disk is created with numerous castings of epoxy resin in different colours and shades. The aesthetic is inspired by the Space Age, a historical period of creative boldness and futuristic vision, suggesting a suspended object—a satellite floating across parallel dimensions, through the real and imaginary. A ghost of light, hanging in the balance between memory and the future.

Matter dissipates into the atmosphere, colour becomes vibration. Phebe is much more than a simple lamp, it's a journey through light and time that resets the boundaries between art and design. 

Keep up with STIR's coverage of Milan Design Week 2025, where we spotlight the most compelling exhibitions, presentations and installations from top studios, designers and brands. Dive into the highlights of Euroluce 2025 and explore all the design districts—Fuorisalone, 5Vie, Brera, Isola, Durini and beyond—alongside the faceted programme of Salone del Mobile.Milano this year.