Charles Osawa
Name of Work: Lamp of Trash
Epoxy resin, trash, LED strip light / 2.5”w x 3.5”d x 13”hAbout the Work:
Lamp of Trash is part of a mixed-media series of sculptural lamps made from repurposed trash, epoxy resin, and LED strip lights. I personally collect and tear down each piece of waste in painstaking detail before setting it in epoxy resin inside custom moldings. The result is a suspended kaleidoscope of finely deconstructed trash, spanning everything from e-waste, discarded packaging, to even soiled garbage. In using these discarded artifacts, I invite viewers to reassess both their perceptions about trash and, ultimately, their relationship to it as constituents of the broader social fabric. The choice to design these sculptures as lamps recasts the waste as both an object of form and function, while adding a literality to my goal of ‘illuminating’ an important social issue.
About the Studio:
Charles Osawa is a former exhibition designer with a background in Architectural Design from Parsons School of Design in New York City. As a fine artist, Charles’s work is driven by a personal mission to highlight the unsustainability of societal waste, while reframing waste itself as a potential source of beauty.
Charles Osawa is a former exhibition designer with a background in Architectural Design from Parsons School of Design in New York City. As a fine artist, Charles’s work is driven by a personal mission to highlight the unsustainability of societal waste, while reframing waste itself as a potential source of beauty.