words James Richards Visitors to the Carpenters Workshop Gallery in west London may never sit comfortably in a public place again. Pablo Reinoso’s new exhibition features three ordinary park benches – but with a twist. “I call these my spaghetti benches,” says Reinoso. The benches’ wooden slats appear to be still growing, snaking out beyond one end. On one piece, the slats climb up a nearby wall in a mass of wooden tendrils. In another, the slats intertwine and overlap before forming another bench.
“I love working with the material. But it’s a slow process,” says Reinoso. “You can’t use a single piece of wood because the grain wouldn’t support the curves I need. Bending the wood is only realistic when you have lots of pieces the same shape. Here, I had to carve individual pieces then glue them and just keep repeating.”
“An ordinary park bench takes about two days to make – for one person, the spaghetti bench takes two months,” he adds. “But if I had the time, I could have gone on for a kilometre.”
The first floor of the gallery will also feature Reinoso’s “breathing sculptures” – a wall of fabric cushions controlled by miniature fans. They inflate and deflate at a rate designed to mirror a person’s breathing pattern.
Visitors will also get a glimpse of Reinoso’s future projects, including models of a concrete staircase to the treetops, and four spaghetti benches intertwining to form a covered pagoda.
The show runs from 30 April – 17 May
