SCULPTING SPACE
HOME
Connected by raw materiality and primordial forms, Bosco Sodi’s home and studios in Mexico show the natural affinity between his art and architecture.
On the face of it, Bosco Sodi’s life is a contradiction. An artist who works with plainly earthbound materials – clay, wood, gold dust, mineral pigments, volcanic rock – Sodi lives a breath-takingly airborne life, traveling to the places where his work is on view. Like other members of his rootless artistic tribe, Sodi maintains multiple studios worldwide, including two in his home country Mexico. He works with clay at Casa Wabi, the Tadao Ando-designed cultural centre he founded a decade ago in Puerto Escondido. He paints and glazes in a complex of Mexico City buildings, designed in 2021 by Alberto Kalach, which also serves as office and exhibition space for his work. And he now has a house in the city as well, Casa Siza. Its creator, Álvaro Siza, took on the project after an impromptu chat that unfolded when Sodi stopped by the 92-year-old Pritzker prize-winner’s office in Porto, in Portugal. For Sodi, the result echoes his earliest memories of architecture as a shaper of space. “My mother showed us a lot when we were young,” he says, recalling family outings around Mexico City. “I fell in love with the capacity of architecture to sculpt the surroundings, in a way. That is the architecture I love.”
Equally important, he adds, are the materials used. He favours the primitive, the unrefined. “That’s why I’m so close to Siza or Alberto Kalach or Tadao Ando, because they use these kinds of materials,” Sodi says. “It’s simple. It’s not flashy. Also, the way they age, it’s really good.”
On the natural affinity between his art and the realm of architecture Sodi notes, “They’re very connected, because architecture is material. It is not an ephemeral art, it’s a real art. My approach is very similar. My work’s very real. It has a material presence that’s energetic, in a way. I think that’s where they cross each other. And also, my work sculpts the space. It dialogues with negative space, and architecture does the same.”
Read the full home feature in Volume XIV.
WORDS Sarah Medford
PHOTOGRAPHY Martien Mulder
MARAZZI, SHAPING INNOVATION THROUGH CERAMIC CRAFT
In the language of surfaces, few materials carry both memory and modernity as effortlessly as ceramic. For Marazzi, this duality has long defined its approach, an enduring dialogue between industrial precision and the human hand, between innovation and heritage.
THE MECHANICS OF SCENT
Previously presented in Paris, Los Angeles, and New York, FRAMA’s exhibition The Mechanics of Scent arrived in Copenhagen, inviting visitors to reconsider one of the most overlooked dimensions of design.
CLOUDLIGHT, PARIS
Bathed in shifting daylight, Amélie du Chalard’s Paris home exists as a deeply personal landscape where art and daily life merge with quiet fluidity.
SCULPTING SPACE
HOME
Connected by raw materiality and primordial forms, Bosco Sodi’s home and studios in Mexico show the natural affinity between his art and architecture.
On the face of it, Bosco Sodi’s life is a contradiction. An artist who works with plainly earthbound materials – clay, wood, gold dust, mineral pigments, volcanic rock – Sodi lives a breath-takingly airborne life, traveling to the places where his work is on view. Like other members of his rootless artistic tribe, Sodi maintains multiple studios worldwide, including two in his home country Mexico. He works with clay at Casa Wabi, the Tadao Ando-designed cultural centre he founded a decade ago in Puerto Escondido. He paints and glazes in a complex of Mexico City buildings, designed in 2021 by Alberto Kalach, which also serves as office and exhibition space for his work. And he now has a house in the city as well, Casa Siza. Its creator, Álvaro Siza, took on the project after an impromptu chat that unfolded when Sodi stopped by the 92-year-old Pritzker prize-winner’s office in Porto, in Portugal. For Sodi, the result echoes his earliest memories of architecture as a shaper of space. “My mother showed us a lot when we were young,” he says, recalling family outings around Mexico City. “I fell in love with the capacity of architecture to sculpt the surroundings, in a way. That is the architecture I love.”
Equally important, he adds, are the materials used. He favours the primitive, the unrefined. “That’s why I’m so close to Siza or Alberto Kalach or Tadao Ando, because they use these kinds of materials,” Sodi says. “It’s simple. It’s not flashy. Also, the way they age, it’s really good.”
On the natural affinity between his art and the realm of architecture Sodi notes, “They’re very connected, because architecture is material. It is not an ephemeral art, it’s a real art. My approach is very similar. My work’s very real. It has a material presence that’s energetic, in a way. I think that’s where they cross each other. And also, my work sculpts the space. It dialogues with negative space, and architecture does the same.”
Read the full home feature in Volume XIV.
WORDS Sarah Medford
PHOTOGRAPHY Martien Mulder