Introduction "Nevica Sempre Quando ti servo"   (It always snow when you write) E. Sottsass Press release to the Milan Furniture Fair 2003. Galleria CS. Dates. When the Japanese maestro of design, Shiro Kuramata, retrospective exhibition coinciding with the Milanese Furniture Fair opens at GCS, many untold stories will unfold, concerning the relations between form and function, art and design, of influences between Eastern and Western design traditions, even stories of heaven and earth metaphors. Kuramata's works are imbued with traces of the old story of Western fascination of Japanese decorative arts and crafts over hundred years ago with, and later in the 20th century the early modernist hunger for Japanese simplicity and structural purity that strongly influenced the functionalistic dogma "form follows function". Most importantly, are the stories that the pieces themselves reveal to us today. One continuous thread that runs through these stories is that of dematerialization. "My strongest desire is to be free of gravity, free of bondage. I want to float," said Kuramata, and this approach imbues his work aim with a kind of spiritual search. Kuramata's attempts to defy gravity find formal expressions in transparent materials as glass, acrylic and expanded steel mesh, and in experimenting with incorporating light. In these materials he explores boundaries between... read on