As Lewis Kemmenoe’s first solo show, Metallurgy is the singular expression of a practice defined by multiplicity.

Kemmenoe’s works, all formally recognisable design objects, range from lighting through to larger furnishings. In each piece, and at each scale, silhouettes of the domestic and familiar have been employed as a framework within which to experiment. Working on, and into, the materiality of each piece, Kemmenoe re-introduces us to the texture of the living environment. This act is a kind of alchemy — converting the functional form of each object into something more poetic, contingent and personal.

Eschewing bare rationalism in favour of intuitive and conversational visual play, in Kemmenoe’s works exacting precision becomes an armature for happenstance, while biomorphic shapes jostle within industrial angles.
Though his previous works have focused on the improvisational reworking of self- similar materials into new and organic compositions, Metallurgy represents Kemmenoe’s epiphany to embody a new material and textural approach that allows each element to intermingle and leap from one form to the next.

Aluminium flows as if mercury into the scooped contours of the natural grain of a wooden shelf. Meanwhile, intersecting islands of blonde timber float as if suspended in the sheer vertical sheets of a metal chair. Everywhere, a hybridisation and near- biological symbiosis occurs. Fundamentally, these pieces are about the skin. From the experience of the user’s skin as they interact with Kemmenoe’s objects, to the tender, punctured, patchwork skin of the objects themselves.