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Intersection
Fictions and Photos of Stones with Artist Luis Úrculo
Artist, teacher and set designer Luis Úrculo turns fantastical ideas into tangible realities. For the unveiling of our first collection with Studio KO, he designed a space that will be remembered as an archive of archives. We asked him a few questions over email in the early spring of 2025 after the show's closing in Milan.
Date
May 5th, 2025
Author
Beni
Exhibition Photography
Romaine Laprade
In the early spring of 2025, Intersection, a new collection of rugs by Studio KO for Beni, made its debut during Milan Design Week staged within a sensorial installation inside of a former textile shop.
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The installation, designed by artist, educator and set designer Luis Úrculo in collaboration with Colin King and Studio KO, offered an enigmatic experience that felt like a world left behind by time’s passing. Wall to wall, thousands of old files, diagrams, drawings, codes, and letters were strewn over every surface like a discombobulated filing cabinet of memory. Each and every one of these elements were meticulously sourced (and in some cases created) by Luis from the archives of old factories in Porto, Portugal and Southern Spain dating back to the 1960’s and 1970’s.
Through the humble and universal medium of paper, the concept for this installation drew from Studio KO's Karl Fournier and Marty Olivier’s fascination with the artifacts of industrial society that inspired the 10 rugs of Intersection. Below we speak to Luis about how he organized all of these big, abstract ideas into this small, evocative exhibition.
STA-0203 is inspired by the subtle precision of a perforated sheet. Here, it hangs on one of the walls inside this former bank, button-shop, and textile atelier. Built in the 1930s, the space, though intimate, spanned three separate rooms for visitors to explore.
BENI
Landing on your website overwhelms the senses in the best way. Drawings of sculptures animate, hands squish something that looks like marbled clay, and a hot pink towel falls on top of an agave plant. You teach, you're an artist, you help others (like us) morph ideas into realities. How do you describe exactly what it is that you do, and what drives you to do it?
LUIS:
I am an artist and I work from my atelier, between Mexico City and Madrid. On one side developing personal projects like sculptures, or films but also creating solutions for diverse clients to expand my work into commercial spaces which is also a very interesting scenario where you find different limitations which forces you to get out of your common language and opens new solutions and unexpected materialities. Personal and commercial work for me start from the same space, but are translated into different formats. It’s a symmetrical nourishing experience.
BENI
For the unveiling of Intersection in Milan, you designed the ultimate archive — a series of rooms swimming in a sea of lost papers, poems, and files. In the archive of your life, what would be the first 10 pages?
LUIS:
Probably not a chronological series of images and drawings, but a collection of references, glimpses of the past, ruins, archeological sites, fragments of objects, films stills, photos of stones, hand gestures, drapery or unfinished drawings. A personal Aby Warburg Atlas of my own obsessions.
Installation view of "Mnemosyne Atlas" by Aby Warburg in the P.S. 1 exhibition "Deep Storage" at MoMa in New York City.
COV-0702 is a relic-turned rug inspired by the motif of a case-bound book. Its dyad construction, featuring both Altas and Zahara techniques, offers a mixed-medium experience of plush woolen knots and a lighter flatweave underfoot. The flatwoven pattern at the center of this rug’s design — in juxtaposition with the surrounding pile — mimics the aesthetic of hand-embroidery, a masterful detail found throughout this collection.
BENI
As someone with such a vibrant and fantastical imagination, we're curious what your home and/or studio looks like. How would you describe it? What are some of your prized possessions?
LUIS:
I like to work in spaces which look like a home, it's a very important space for me as I spend most of my time there, so carpets, curtains, and objects fill the space, and of course a nice kitchen to cook or gather friends. In Mexico City, we have a big collection of Mexican folk art pieces, ceramics, clay sculptures and lots of plants. Furniture is a mix of Enzo Mari and personal prototypes.
"At home, as an extension of the studio, I follow the same pattern, but I keep there the most special objects, like a Børge Mogensen daybed I bought in Portugal long time ago or some Joanna piotrowska photos," Luis explains.
From the archive of Luis' work: NUNCA SERÉ DE PIEDRA (ni la misma piedra lo es).
BENI
We read in an interview you once gave that it's a dream of yours to design an opera set. What would it look like?
LUIS:
Well, this would depend on the music piece. Opera is a space translation of a music score expanded with light, costumes and body movements. This gathers most of my interests together, in an open conversation with the libretto and the music director. Opera for me has many vectors of emotion: time, sound, movement and fiction.
CEN-0124 is inspired by the concealed mysteries of a redacted document. Its flatwoven Zahara construction features hand-embroidery, a level of virtuoso embellishment that only a handful of weavers in our studio can execute.
BENI
Of the 10 rugs of Intersection, which is your favorite and why?
LUIS:
CEN 0124, for sure! The mystery of this transcription, letter or document was very inspiring when working on the installation in Milan.
Luis Úrculo lives and works between Madrid and Mexico City. His practice takes anthropology, archeology and criminology as a main references of phenomenology to create lines of investigation based on reconstructions, timelines, interpretations, uncertain materialities, imprecise descriptions, or ambiguities.
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