Birth of an Icon by contemporary Artist Casey Curran
For Lancôme’s Art of Absolue 2025 project, Somexing Artistic commissioned American sculptor Casey Curran to reinterpret the brand’s emblematic rose through motion and light. The kinetic installation, “Birth of an Icon”, explores the tension between fragility and endurance. Thus, beauty turns into perpetual movement.
The project unites art, science, and emotion offering a contemporary reading of timeless symbols through mechanical poetry.
Birth of an Icon
With “Birth of an Icon,” Curran creates a celestial environment of kinetic textile roses. Each flower opens and closes in a steady rhythm, like a perpetual blossom. Suspended in space, the artwork moves in synchronized harmony. Metallic and textile petals expand and contract in cycles that evoke growth, fragility, and renewal.
Meticulously engineered and assembled by hand, each rose is powered by fine mechanical systems that blend motion and sound into a seamless sensory experience. As viewers move through this “Milky Way” of kinetic flowers, the gentle hum of the motors merges with a soft soundscape. The installation shifts into a living organism of beauty and rhythm.
Through Somexing Artistic’s curatorial guidance, “Birth of an Icon” reinterprets Lancôme’s emblematic rose as a dynamic fusion of art, technology, and nature. The artwork becomes a sculptural meditation on time and transformation, where engineering precision and poetic emotion coexist in an experience of quiet transcendence.
organza, aluminum, acrylic, brass, steel, polyester film, sound
530 cm H x 660 cm L x 600cm W
Casey Curran
Seattle-based sculptor and installation artist known for intricate kinetic works that merge art, technology, and ecology. His hand-cranked and motorized mechanisms evoke cycles of growth, decay, and rebirth. Curran has collaborated with institutions like Meow Wolf and exhibited widely across the U.S. and abroad. Themes of interconnectedness and impermanence run throughout his practice. His works often invite viewers into poetic, meditative experiences.
