Plume Panels

Rotterdam-based artist and designer Sabine Marcelis presents Plume, a solo exhibition at Raritas — the new collectible design section of Salone del Mobile. The exhibition marks one of Marcelis's most ambitious works to date, bringing together a monumental resin fountain and three accompanying wall works in a meditation on a single, obsessively studied phenomenon: a bubble, rising.

At the centre of the exhibition stands the fountain, a single blade of polished cast resin, 3.4 metres tall and barely 16 centimetres deep, set on a polished stainless steel plinth. Through a narrow internal channel, liquid moves and bubbles rise, each one travelling upward through the translucent body of the object. The coloured resin filters and transforms light, making the entire form appear to glow from within, shifting with the position of the viewer. The work is the result of extensive research at the studio, prototyping and testing the precise viscosity of the liquid to achieve complete control over the bubble behaviour; choreographing something that appears entirely natural.

Accompanying the fountain are three resin panel works that operate on the same logic in reverse. Spherical forms of varying scale are carved into the resin from behind, creating a lensing effect that concentrates and bends light. Where the fountain gives the bubble a living presence, the panels give it permanence, the same subject held in opposite states of time.

Marcelis has long been drawn to the transformative relationship between material, light, and colour, and to the way translucent materials can make light feel like a substance in itself. Plume distils that inquiry to its most essential point. The work is void of decoration, stripped to the essential, timeless in its material and uncompromising in its scale.

The exhibition is presented within Raritas, a context Marcelis considers uniquely suited to this kind of work. Collectible design, she notes, exists outside of commercial restraints and marketing briefs. Arguably the most free space a designer can work in. It is that freedom that made Plume possible.

Plume is presented at Raritas, Pavilion 9 - Booth 32, Salone del Mobile, Milan, April 2026. Thanks to Cristiano Baccianti, Founder of COLLECTIONAL, Dubai