LOS ANGELES, CA.- Since the beginning of his caveman aesthetic, where his sculptural pieces would invite people to hide from ambient fear, his interest in archeology has grown even more prominent, proposing fragmented finds and materials that coagulate into magnificent auras that take away one’s breath. As if moving from the rudimentary Stone Age to the enlightened Bronze age, Nacho Carbonell takes his progression in stride as he combs the earth for even more unique materials to be amalgamated into organic shapes. The pandemic took him deep into himself, turned him inside out and brought him to the wild shores of hisSpanish childhood where he would play with his grandfather, working with familiar colliding materials such as sand and sea.
He rediscovered diving and observed himself drifting in the vast ocean, scanning surfaces from above, accidental geological expressions that inspired his new quest for submerged matter from memory. He has an intuitive gift for assembling high and low materials that bond to form instinctive and primitive beauty. The witch-crafted designs are loaded with sand, water and wood and even stones, and speak volumes of animistic energies that create palpable reverberations, such as writing with mesh, sketching with driftwood and letting things rest to rust. Fragmenting the pieces in chapters and craters and crevasses, he might be looking for another planet to explore. Imagining further challenges for his interest in archeology, scripting stories of the beginning of other cultures, progressing his dedication to topographical material research, which has become his landscaping vision.
In these collected processes, albeit compacted, the matter becomes more transparent, the work seems to become less protective, as if the man is leaving his cave to discover the call of open plains and the palpable freedom of water, air and space. Elevating and levitating his work to new heights, the pieces seem to float, waiting to be called to heaven. Their rose-tinted meshed up materials give them the afterglow of a glorious day, the sun setting as the city of Los Angeles is coming to rest, illuminated by a glorious Carbonell’s chandelier.
Since the beginning of his caveman aesthetic, where his sculptural pieces would invite people to hide from ambient fear, his interest in archeology has grown even more prominent, proposing fragmented finds and materials that coagulate into magnificent auras that take away one’s breath. As if moving from the rudimentary Stone Age to the enlightened Bronze age, Nacho Carbonell takes his progression in stride as he combs the earth for even more unique materials to be amalgamated into organic shapes. The pandemic took him deep into himself, turned him inside out and brought him to the wild shores of his Spanish childhood where he would play with his grandfather, working with familiar colliding materials such as sand and sea.
He rediscovered diving and observed himself drifting in the vast ocean, scanning surfaces from above, accidental geological expressions that inspired his new quest for submerged matter from memory. He has an intuitive gift for assembling high and low materials that bond to form instinctive and primitive beauty. The witch-crafted designs are loaded with sand, water and wood and even stones, and speak volumes of animistic energies that create palpable reverberations, such as writing with mesh, sketching with driftwood and letting things rest to rust. Fragmenting the pieces in chapters and craters and crevasses, he might be looking for another planet to explore. Imagining further challenges for his interest in archeology, scripting stories of the beginning of other cultures, progressing his dedication to topographical material research, which has become his landscaping vision.
In these collected processes, albeit compacted, the matter becomes more transparent, the work seems to become less protective, as if the man is leaving his cave to discover the call of open plains and the palpable freedom of water, air and space. Elevating and levitating his work to new heights, the pieces seem to float, waiting to be called to heaven. Their rose-tinted meshed up materials give them the afterglow of a glorious day, the sun setting as the city of Los Angeles is coming to rest, illuminated by a glorious Carbonell’s chandelier.
Nacho Carbonell
“I like to see objects as living organisms, imagine them coming alive and being able to surprise you with their behavior. I want to create objects with my hands; then I can give them my personality. I turn them into communicative objects that can arouse one’s feelings and imagination. In short, what I want to create are objects with a fictional or fantasy element that allow you to escape everyday life,” says Nacho Carbonell.
Carbonell is known for his tactile approach to sculpture which plays with textures, experimental techniques, and natural materials.
Born in Spain in 1980 and now based in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, Carbonell works alongside his team of designers and artists in an open warehouse. He graduated in 2003 from Cardenal Herrera University in Spain and went on to study at the Design Academy Eindhoven. Upon graduating, he created collections such as Evolution in 2009, which won him a nomination for Beazley Design of the Year from the Design Museum in London.
In 2010, a year after being named a Designer of the Future at Design Miami/Basel, he presented This Identity, redefining his current style of organic forms and rough and colorful textures. His pieces are part of private collections and museums around the world.
