Nacho Carbonell: Fragment

Spanish designer and sculptor Nacho Carbonell presents Fragment, a new exhibition that demonstrates Carbonell’s consistently self-renewing artistic practice. Through recent experimentations shown for the first time, as well as a return to forms from earlier in his career, the exhibition foregrounds fragmentation as a process and aesthetic principle that allows the artist to seamlessly blend organic textures and sculptural forms, into bold, imaginative design.

Based in the Netherlands, Carbonell explores the idea of objects as living organisms capable of emotion and surprise, creating pieces that appear both organic and otherworldly. The Valencia-born artist creates all his works by hand, using materials sourced near his Eindhoven studio to instill each piece with personality and presence.

In this exhibition, Big Round Chandelier Los Angeles, originally created in 2021, is revisited by Carbonell, who sees the return and revisiting of previous forms as a central part of his practice. This suspended lighting sculpture features pigmented plaster applied to honeycomb metal mesh to create cocoon-like formations that hang like colossal fruit from metal branches. Working on-site in the New York gallery, Carbonell has imbued the sculpture with a new vitality through the application of layers of paint in his characteristically spontaneous and physical approach. Recent pieces made of similar materials further exemplify Carbonell’s fascination with the shapes and textures of the natural world, like Pollock Table Lamp (1169/2025), in which dense formations sprout from the upper part of the sculpture like the thick leaves of a tree, while its trunk is rooted in concrete base. The hybrid form blends the natural with the architectural, illustrating the artist's ability to amass organic and mineral elements.

Metal mesh and plaster were also employed to sculpt Soft Round Orange Table Lamp (1160/2025), whose bulbous, folding protrusions resemble coral, stone, or curving petals. A metallic mesh is also used for the skeleton of Mesh Table Lamp (314/2025), here filled with pieces of stone from Carbonell's previous works to create body and substance, illustrating the artist’s recombinatory approach.

Fragments also foregrounds Carbonell’s embrace of glass in his sculpture. Glass Table Lamp Bubble (1107/2025) features irregularly shaped shards and fragments of coloured glass arranged in a mosaic style Disco Ball Table Lamp (1135/2025) also incorporates tin and copper, recalling the stained-glass traditions of Art Deco and Art Nouveau. In contrast, Dual Stone Arch Glass Bubble Table Lamp (1164/2025) features similar materials in a form resembling the slouching body of a mythical creature. In these pieces, fragmentary materials converge to create fluid, dynamic forms that invite views from different angles, while light and colour interact in dazzling combinations. Collectively, these works illustrate the ways in which Carbonell’s distinctively tactile and experimental approach shapes a wide variety of material, inspiration, and temporality into expressive, living forms. As communicative objects that arouse our feelings and provoke our imaginations, the exhibited works take formal, sculptural, and materials elements in new directions, while sustaining the principles of renewal and regeneration that have long characterized Carbonell’s practice.