[Title] Hatch up!
[Artist] Nacho Carbonell
[Date] November 19, 2014 to January 20, 2015
Enclosed in an immaculate white world, nearly blinding to the sight in its brilliance, strangely shaped animals, never seen before on the face of the earth, wriggle about. At first they puff up robustly, only to rapidly shrivel to the point of flopping feebly on the ground. At that instant, the forms laboriously struggle back to their feet. Carpeting the floor are scattered white-hued fragments. Perhaps they are the cracked and broken shells of eggs, from which these creatures hatched into this world. The animals move about prolifically, at their own fancies and velocities, in a seemingly endless state of flux.
This window creation is the brainchild of Spanish designer Nacho Carbonell. Herein, he breathes virtual life into odd forms moving about in what appears to be a snow-blocked white realm. Following experimental concept after concept, trial after trial, he happened upon the dewy-white skin, translucent and clinging, mirroring the hues of newborn freshness. He bestows this lucid façade on the creatures in the panorama. Each time they wither, and then regain their feet, it is like a new life has emerged.
Metamorphosis, in essence, is not the result of change. Rather, it is the very process of change itself. Within this snowbound window domain, an endless series of movements unfold. The uniformly white walls in the background, as if in rejoinder to the energy of the animals, swell out with power and momentum, and then recoil in deflated retreat. Here as well, the metamorphic change repeats itself again, and again, and again. At length, as if triggered by this seething sea of change, even the chair on which a mannequin sits in the left window stirs in unison with the flow. Twisting, stretching, the object seems bent on carrying the metamorphosis on into a world apart.
Nacho Carbonell
Born in Valencia, Spain in 1980, Nacho Carbonell graduated from the Spanish University Cardenal Herrerra C.E.U (2003), and with a first class honours degree from the Design Academy Eindhoven (2007). Hybrid objects that lie somewhere between art and design are characteristic of Carbonell’s conceptual oeuvre. His work and working method can be regarded as a kind of playful yet critical investigation into the reciprocal relationship that people have with objects and the (symbolic) significance they attach to them. Carbonell’s very outspoken and recognizable form language is typified by striking material choices and ongoing experiment.
his work is included in the collections of the Fnac-Fonds national d’art contemporain (National Contemporary Art Collection, France), of the Groninger Museum, Netherlands, and in the United States in the MoMA San Francisco, and the Art Institute of Chicago.”