Ateliers Courbet presents its collaboration with Mexican multidisciplinary artist Héctor Esrawe with his first solo exhibition in the United States, opening March 19th, 2024, at the Chelsea gallery (134 Tenth Ave. NY, NY 10011). The exhibition will feature the Gear series, a collection of limited-edition lights and tables hand-crafted by Esrawe’s team of art founders outside of Mexico City. The exhibition will include the unveiling of three new Gear pieces resulting from the dialogue between the artist and gallery founder Melanie Courbet. Expanding on Esrawe’s body of work, the Gear series reflects the artist’s unwavering commitment to the master-craftsmanship heritage of his country and his ongoing tribute to the rarefied master-artisans that keep it alive today.

Known for his multidisciplinary work in architecture and product design, Esrawe’s signature editions are rooted in his appreciation for materiality and Mexico’s ancestral metalsmithing practices. Combining innovative and time-honored techniques, he reinterprets and imbues common forms with revisited purposes, artisanal processes, and recontextualized materials, shedding his personal light and perspective onto them.

The design concept behind The Gear functional bronze sculptures draws inspiration from the geometry and repeating sequences of utilitarian cardboard’s honeycomb cells. Creating his own pattern and interpretation, the artist renders a fragmented and rearranged sequence that is hand-formed and then cast in bronze or aluminum. Esrawe gives a whimsical nod to the sculptural nature of the rudimentary material inspiration by emphasizing the texture on the edges of the aleatory vertical pattern by making an elegant sculptural interpretation of the common and accessible material in refined metals.

Photo by: Alejandro Ramírez Orozco