Written 2 months ago by Trendland Team
Spanish artist Nacho Carbonell just ended yesterday, his Armory Show solo exhibition represented by Carpenters Workshop Gallery. For the show, the gallery recreated the artist’s Eindhoven studio including his personal workshop table serving as a ‘cabinet of curiosity’ where the past, present and future of Carbonell’s studio intersects.
Situated around the workshop table are Carbonell’s organic, large-scale, cocoon-like sculptures brought to life as fantastical creations in a contemporary-twist on Pygmalion. From smashed concrete bases that evoke ruin, surreal tree-like forms in man-made materials of steel and metal mesh grow.
An intimate collage of creative amulets – personal tools, maquettes, found objects, unfinished ideas, materials – are arranged on the table, an altar of inspiration that synthesizes the trajectory of Carbonell’s practice.
These ‘amulets’ are both signposts, seeds from which new ideas, new objects, new collections grow, and the artist’s companions in the creative process.
These ‘amulets’ are both signposts, seeds from which new ideas, new objects, new collections grow, and the artist’s companions in the creative process.
These works, part of Carbonell’s acclaimed Light Mesh series, offer a parallel reality where objects and things are built or grown from inhospitable soil and environments. Together these works construct a strange and uncanny forest where one becomes lost in textural details and biomorphic shapes, a corporeal fruition of what can grow in the aftermath of destruction.
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