Nacho Carbonell 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 2013, he won Designer of the Year in his home country, Spain. He started collaborating with Carpenters Workshop Gallery in 2015 and has since become one of the leading artists that the gallery represents worldwide.
“I like to see objects as living organisms, imagine them coming alive and being able to surprise you with their behaviour. 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. His approach is unique, seeing objects as ‘living organisms’ that come alive and surprise you with their behaviour. For Carbonell, forming a relationship with his work is integral – he creates objects with his hands in order to impart his personality to them. He describes his pieces as “communicative objects that arouse one’s feelings and imagination... that allows you to escape everyday life”. Carbonell’s designs are made using locally sourced materials he finds near his studio in Eindhoven.
Carbonell’s pieces have been shown in museums around the world such as the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands, the 21_21 Design Sight in Japan, the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris, France, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina. His work One-Seater Concrete Tree (2022) was recently acquired by the Cincinatti Museum of Art. His pieces are also in several private collections.
