With one in five of us reportedly affected by mental-health issues, anything that helps to make us happier is a huge plus. If that thing is also aesthetically pleasing, all the better. With the World Health Organization confirming that art can improve human health, French painter Guillaume Bottazzi has devoted much of his work to this realm; in fact, research by University of Vienna neuroscientists has found that the curves in Bottazzi’s paintings activate the viewer’s pleasure zones and reduce stress. The neuro-aesthetics pioneer has created more than 100 large-scale murals in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. over the past three decades that aim to reduce anxiety. His Hope 2011, for example, a 10,000-square-foot, site-specific installation, was emblazoned in red, orange, and yellow on the exterior of the Miyanomori Art Museum after the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan earlier that year.
Bottazzi’s latest endeavor continues his mission to improve our biology by employing his paintings in another way: Nutty, a lighting collection of circular fixtures ranging from 11 to 48 inches in diameter, slightly tilted from their mount surface. A lacquered-wood frame surrounds heat-tempered, laminated glass laid with enamel in soothing swirls of soft colors, made even more ethereal when illuminated from internal LEDs. “I have long dreamed of painting with light,” Bottazzi says, “and that the poetry of my work will make people feel good.”