Komorebi

Carpenters Workshop Gallery presents Komorebi, an exhibition of new lighting pieces by Aki+Arnaud Cooren, the Paris-based design studio known for serene, dreamlike creations that evoke poignant and harmonious confluences with the natural world. The works on display add to the designers’ Ishigaki collection – an ongoing series of lamps inspired by memories of freediving off the coast of Ishigaki Island in southern Japan.

The exhibition centres around the concept of ‘komorebi’ – the Japanese word describing the soft, shifting light created when sunlight filters through the leaves of trees. This interplay of brightness, shadow and movement informs the design of the Ishigaki lamps, whose colours and materials produce an abstract intersection of fabric, liquid and light.

Each lamp comprises a carbon-metallic base supporting a bamboo stem with a delicate linen lampshade. Light is projected upward from a bulb in the base, producing a mesmerising shadow on the ceiling reminiscent of the small circle of sunlight on the ocean’s surface as viewed from many metres underwater. Meticulously hand-crafted in the designers’ workshop, every Ishigaki lamp is a unique sculpture combining the natural elegance of bamboo, the harshness of metal and the fragile poetry of fabric.

The exhibition features seven new floor lamps whose sunset coral colour is inspired by coral formations that the designers encountered around Ishigaki Island. The tonality of the pigment leans towards reddish-pink hues, inviting viewers to discover new depths and varieties within coral shades. Shadows drift across the sculpture’s surfaces with the same slow rhythm as water, creating an atmosphere where air and sea seem to merge.