Afterglow

Carpenters Workshop Gallery Los Angeles · Hollywood

Exhibition on view: Oct 22, 2026 - Feb 15, 2027

"Afterglow", led by Johanna Grawunder and Paul Cocksedge, looks at how light and heat produce collectible design, from the flames of a potter’s kiln and the illumination of functional objects to the intense temperatures that shape glass and metal. The group show brings together designers including Nacho Carbonell, Vincenzo De Cotiis, Ingrid Donat, Rick Owens, Michèle Lamy and Atelier Van Lieshout.

Johanna Grawunder

Johanna Grawunder (b. 1961, San Diego) is an American architect, artist and designer known for her work in lighting. She graduated in architecture from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 1984, studied and worked in Florence, and joined Sottsass Associati in Milan in 1985, becoming a partner in 1989 and remaining until 2001, when she opened her own studio in Milan and San Francisco. Embracing digital color, light and high-performance materials, her work ranges from public installations and interiors, such as the restaurant Robert at New York's Museum of Arts and Design, to limited-edition furniture and lights.

Johanna Grawunder. Photo by Lutz Sternstein

Paul Cocksedge

Paul Cocksedge is a London-based designer who co-founded Paul Cocksedge Studio in London with Joana Pinho in 2004. Working with a dedicated team of collaborators, the studio has won national and international acclaim for original, innovative design underpinned by research into the limits of technology, materials and manufacturing. Its work, from product design to architectural projects, is defined by simplicity, imagination and an unrelenting attention to detail. In 2013 Cocksedge presented his first solo show at Friedman Benda in New York.

Nacho Carbonell

Nacho Carbonell is a Spanish designer born in Valencia who graduated from Cardenal Herrera CEU University in 2003 before studying at Design Academy Eindhoven. He lives in Eindhoven, working with a team of designers and artists from an open warehouse studio. His work treats objects as living organisms capable of emotion and surprise, formed by hand from locally sourced materials so that each piece appears organic and otherworldly. Among his best-known works are the "Cocoon" lamps, tree-like sculptures of steel branches with mesh cocoons made from sand and textile hardener.

Artworks in this exhibition

Vincenzo De Cotiis

Vincenzo De Cotiis (b. 1958) is an Italian artist and designer who lives and works in Milan. His practice pursues a reconciliation of ancient idioms with futuristic forms, unfolding through material experimentation rather than reason. Assembling recovered materials and reflective, otherworldly surfaces, he transforms imperfection and patina into sources of beauty, creating works that hover between function and sculpture, evoking both timeworn relics and visions of future worlds. The Vincenzo De Cotiis Foundation in Venice hosts exhibitions, installations and publications dedicated to contemporary art and design.

Vincenzo De Cotiis. Photo by MarcusHV (CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Ingrid Donat

Ingrid Donat (b. 1957) is a French-Swedish sculptor and designer known for geometric designs in bronze and other materials. Born in France and raised in Sweden, she returned to Paris at nineteen and studied sculpture with Sylva Bernt. Her close friendship with Diego Giacometti proved a turning point, encouraging her to develop her own furniture in the 1980s. After two decades creating designs for her family home, she began exhibiting publicly in 1998. Influenced by André Groult, Armand-Albert Rateau and Jeanne Lanvin, her work is held by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.

Ingrid Donat. Photo by Alixe Lay for TEFAF

Rick Owens

Rick Owens (b. 1961) is an American fashion designer from Porterville, California, in the San Joaquin Valley. Drawn to Hollywood and Los Angeles's punk underground in the 1980s, he studied painting at Otis College of Art and Design before learning pattern-making and draping at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College. He launched his eponymous line in 1994 from a storefront off Hollywood Boulevard; American Vogue underwrote his first runway show in New York, and he added menswear in 2002, shown in Paris. He later moved to Paris with his wife and partner Michèle Lamy, and also designs a furniture line.

Rick Owens. Photo: Myles Kalus Anak Jihem. Source: Wikimedia Commons (Rick_Owens_Paris_Fashion_Week_RTW_Spring_Summer_2019.jpg), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Charles Trevelyan

Charles Trevelyan is a designer who came to his practice through a gradual transition from material science and engineering. His influences range from the natural textures and colors of his upbringing in Australia to the cellular and crystalline forms he encountered in electron microscopy earlier in his career, and more recently aerial photographs of natural, industrial and agricultural land. Favoring physical models and prototypes over sketching, he seeks a balance between ambiguity and familiarity, exploring how incremental alterations can shift an object from awkward to graceful.