Ramin Razani teacher, entrepreneur and artist. Dislocating surfaces in space, creating three-dimensional works from sheets of paper using cuts, parallel and oblique folds that create light and shadow effects: here lies his passion. Professor at the Università della Repubblica di San Marino, he teaches Descriptive Geometry for the course of studies for a degree in Industrial Design.
Perini Journal
His interest for “works in paper” begins during his university years in Florence. Ramin studied in a library called “La Cooperativa dei Ragazzi” that at the beginning of the 1970s decorated its windows with original works in paper: origami. He was struck by certain figures and decided to approach the “world of paper works”.
He studied the great designers such as Bruno Munari and Enzo Mari who inspired him in what was to become his art: kirigami, works created with cut and folded paper.
Ramin Razani’s “paper works” derive, as formal thought, from experiments made during the Bauhaus years by László Moholy-Nagy and Josef Albers. The instructions of the German school’s lab were simple: take a material - paper for example - allow just two operations, cutting and folding, do not glue anything, do not remove anything and create a structure.
For a purely technical point of view, the art of kirigami, contrary to what we may think, has no connection to the East and to origami but it can be related back to animated pop-up books of the 19th century: illustrated publications that become 3D when opened thanks to folds, cuts and slots.
Ramin creates abstract and figurative works. The processes he applies are none other than geometric transformations in space. They often resemble floral shapes because the geometric rules are the same as those followed by nature. He prefers the abstract because the shape comes into being as the experimenting continues, and the result in unimaginable!
He experiments with cuts and folds using other materials, too. First among them polypropylene, a very flexible and resistant material processed using the same technique as paper, that gives rise to the lamps he creates. But he does not stop here. He creates scenic designs using corrugated board, building large-sized installations and fascinating sculp-tures in metal. *