A FRESH TAKE ON FELIPE PANTONE'S MOVING COLOUR-WHEEL SCULPTURES

Kinetic Colour Wheels That Literally Turn the Spectrum

Then there’s Felipe Pantone’s Subtractive Variability Compact. A hypnotic wall-mounted kinetic sculpture. It’s built from stacked acrylic discs coated with UV paint in cyan, magenta, and yellow. As each disc rotates, subtractive colour mixing happens in real time, generating an infinite dance of shifting hues.

Imagine how the viewer becomes the artist or at least a colour co-conspirator. Watching the discs spin is like watching a live CMYK light show, where colour isn’t just seen, it’s performed. Pantone is literally spinning the colour wheel.

Sculptures That Slide, Shift and Reveal

There’s also a piece where three translucent discs in bold CMY colours move in tandem on an aluminium axis. As they slide and overlap, they reveal new tones and optical mash-ups. It’s colour theory in motion.

One Insta caption nailed it: “The impeccable aluminium mechanism gently slides the three‑colour PMMA panels creating in each movement a spectrum of colours, revealing the …”Instagram

Why This Colour-Wheel Kinetic Work Gets Me Buzzing

• Interactive delight – Viewers become collaborators. They touch, spin, watch colour emerge, shift and disappear. That playful, surprise effect is pure Kaja Knowers territory.

• Material meets tech – These sculptures turn acrylic (a close cousin to glass) into a light prism, embodying transformation, holographic depth and material honesty.

• Colour as story – Pantone is remixing CMY pigments in real time. It’s chromatic alchemy, and it’s exactly the kind of optical trick I want to explore in glass: light, colour and emotion, changing before your eyes.

  
  

How I’m Translating That Energy into My Own Glass Practice

Inspired by those spinning discs and sliding colour overlays, here’s what’s brewing in my studio:

• Rotating gradient glass panels – Maybe UV-reactive, maybe etched, shifting colour as they turn. You slide it, you shift the story.

• Overlap-and-reveal glass mobiles – Layers of coloured glass that float and pivot, revealing new tones when they cross. Playful percussion of light.

• Viewer-controlled glass arrangeables – Modular pieces you can reconfigure like a sliding puzzle. Colour performance becomes personal.

  
  

The idea isn’t to replicate Pantone, obviously. It's to take his kinetic, spectral energy and remix it with my own found-glass textures, tech-light glitch, and cheeky surprise.