Rive Roshan: Capturing the ephemeral qualities of light

Rive Roshan
Penny Craswell, Architecture, AU, December 8, 2024
Amsterdam-based art practice Rive Roshan pushes industrial processes to create design objects that shift our perspective and capture the transience of light.
 
When Dutch designer Ruben de la Rive Box and Australian designer Golnar Roshan first met, they were living in Amsterdam and in their early careers after graduating, Ruben from the University of the Arts Utrecht in the Netherlands and Golnar from the University of Technology Sydney. A year later, they both moved to London and worked at different high-profile design studios before deciding to start their own practice together – Rive Roshan.
“We just had this desire to figure out what our vision would be, if we were to create something [on our own],” explains Golnar.
 
So, what is that vision? Rive Roshan makes art and design objects that reflect light in interesting ways, using colour and material to play with light. The intention is to shift perspectives, encouraging the viewer to see things in new ways.
 
 
“Although our work is very abstract and it’s not political or social design in any way, we feel that through art and design, you have the ability to change people’s way of seeing and shift people’s perspectives,” says Golnar. The works often comprise geometric shapes and feature repeating lines or graduated colours, creating moiré effects or reflections that add visual interest.
 
 In order to create the exact effects that they want, Golnar and Ruben work with industrial processes and manufacturers, which can be particularly difficult to achieve because such companies are used to working on a larger scale. “What we try to achieve is to take something that’s quite high tech or very large scale, but then find a way to add poetry in that material,” Golnar says.
 
 

The studio is represented in Australia by Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, which supports functional art. A 2024 exhibition at the gallery entitled Internal Reflection showed works that had never been seen before, including the Radiance tables and bench; three-dimensional glass versions of the Radiance panel series; and Colour Shift lights, which are three-dimensional versions of panels in the Colour Shift series. It was the studio’s first solo show in Australia, and the culmination of three years of work, made possible by a close collaboration with the gallery. Other pieces explored the capabilities of 3D-printed sand.

 

“We found a way to play with the texture of the glass and the colour in between, so that it has this almost lenticular effect,” says Golnar. “What’s amazing about working with Sally is that she really pushed us to make something that’s also functional.”

 

Recognition from major institutions includes the Powerhouse Museum, which commissioned the studio to create a work for the Hybrid: Objects For Future Homes exhibition. Time to Reflect is a series of glass domes, treated with mica and mirrored coatings that reflect ethereal light patterns. The Colour Dial Table, Sunrise Light is also now in the permanent collection of the NGV.

 

In December 2024, a selection of Rive Roshan’s work from its solo exhibition will be shown in Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert’s debut presentation at Design Miami. The duo are also busy translating their ideas, currently expressed as objects, to a larger scale and into installation and performance contexts. With roots in the Netherlands and Australia, Ruben and Golnar have carved an impressive niche for themselves and their studio is now truly global, bringing the pair’s innovative eye to exhibitions and artworks in design centres around the world.

Rive Roshan is represented exclusively in Australia and New Zealand by Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert.

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