Chiaroscuro Curated by Michèle Lamy

“The Light” evoking fire, nature’s sculptor, and how the landscape is formed through the warmth of the sun. The heat has been harnessed to bend metals and glass to create the vast city of Dubai, as well as the objects of astounding beauty by the true masters of their materials: Rick Owens Furniture, Studio Drift and Nacho Carbonell.

Inspired by the Pop Art movement, Lamy brings together a charismatic influx of colour seen most vividly in the Children’s Clocks of Maarten Baas, the Campana Brothers’ Dolphins and Sharks Banquete chair and Martin Laforet’s concrete Variations seats.

David/Nicolas pushes the malleability of stone and glass to new extremes with bending waves and organic shapes that surprise and confound but are rooted in the natural beauty of the material. Floating bubbles fixed overhead in glass sculptures from the Verhoeven Twins inform us of the space around us, creating valleys and voids that allow us to explore the shape and light through their delicate intricacy.

As we move in to “The Darkness”, Lamy invites the viewer to a refined and mysterious space, where beguiling forms take shape in the depths, rooted primarily in the work of Rick Owens Furniture. Meanwhile, the tigre pattern across Rick Owen’s Gallic Chair evokes alternating shadows that ground the artist’s practice in the rich materials of stone and wood.

The imposing forms of writhing bronze catch the subdued light in The Light and Darkness by Wendell Castle, bringing a new life to metal with the exploration of surface at the centre of the work. Kendell Geers unsettles and challenges the viewer with the muted masks of Flesh of the Spirit.

The polarities of the exhibition are summed up through two contrasting works by Nacho Carbonell. Bathed in light, the polychromatic canopy of Combi Cocoon 2 shines with a warmth that’s reminiscent of the Spanish artist’s sun-baked homeland, while the brooding glow of the lights that punctuate the voluminous black shades of Inside a Forest Cloud represent constellations in a pitch-black sky.