The upcoming edition of SP–Arte marks a turning point in the trajectory of Lucas Dualde and Pali Cornelsen, who present their first solo booth at the fair. This debut reflects the evolution of a language shaped over a decade of creative exchange across Brazil, Spain, and the United States, now engaging more directly with Brazil.

Their partnership is rooted in a twenty-year friendship and a rarealignment of sensibilities—shared references, comple-mentary instincts, and a deeply compatible aesthetic language. Lucas, a Spanish designer based in São Paulo for the past thirteen years, operates at the intersection of architecture, interiors, and furniture, articulating a vocabulary informed both by familial references—such as the legacy of his great-uncle, architect Josep Lluís Sert—and by the formative landscapes of Comillas, on Spain’s northern coast. Pali, a Brazilian designer living between New York and Los Angeles, in a practice that spans interior and furniture design, develops an ongoing investigation into material concepts, natural surfaces, minerals, and pigments, in close dialogue with the legacy of his father, artist Jejo Cornelsen.

For both, SP–Arte becomes a moment of synthesis—an opportunity to consolidate this trajectory into a new phase of research. The duo suggests that this is not simply a continuation of their precise joinery and material explorations, but a deliberate shift: opening their language to new forms of experimentation that expand both technique and tactile perception. Among the works presented are two series of lighting pieces that emerge from an investigation into the threshold between utilitarian object and sculptural expression, extending the studio’s vocabulary toward a more liberated and expressive dimension. Developed through a direct dialogue between the studio and Jejo Cornelsen, the first series begins with blocks of wood split by hand—using a process similar to chopping firewood, in search of that same raw texture—then pigmented according to a palette developed in collaboration with the artist. These elements are assembled into vertical compositions of varying scales, resulting in a range of typologies: table lamps, floor lamps, and a more expansive piece that extends from floor or ceiling, its central shade subtly referencing the language of George Nakashima.

In the remaining works, shades are crafted from hand-embroidered textiles, assuming deliberately deconstructed geometries, almost in a state of formal dissolution. The series also includes a wall-mounted piece composed of wooden fragments layered like a skin over a tubular structure—an indirect reference to the shingles of vernacular North American architecture. Here, light emerges through fissures and overlaps, activating the surface as a luminous relief.

The second series unfolds through ceramics, where cylinders of varying diameters and tones are stacked into vertical structures that range from more intimate table pieces to interventions that extend across the full height of a space. The work resists a polished finish, instead embracing imperfection as a trace of process: each element retains marks of its making, while some are crowned with textiles in a deliberate state ofunraveling, creating a poetic tension between the geometric and the organic. Light operates as a structural element, filtering through ceramic, linen, and silk, diffusing into soft emanations that evoke more primordial sources.

From this same line of inquiry emerges the exhibition’s central table: a piece of quiet density, built from a circular top in solid ebonized wood, its softly curved edge suggesting a tactile gesture—almost inviting touch. The base echoes the logic of the lighting series, composed of stacked sections of tree trunk, hand-painted by Jejo Cornelsen, transforming the support into a structure that is at once constructive and painterly. The Tres Formas sideboard, in ebonized peroba mica wood, shares this same constructive logic: wooden shelves that appear to float in space, supported not by conventional means but by three cast bronze elements that establish a poetic reference to Three Forms by sculptor Barbara Hepworth.

More than a group of objects, the presentation unfolds as an ongoing field of investigation, where material, technique, and gesture converge in the construction of a distinct language. Presenting this body of work in Brazil carries an add-itional significance: it marks the beginning of a deliberate movement toward engaging more closely with the local market. By introducing a solo booth at SP–Arte, the duo repositions their practice, inserting it more clearly into the broader conversation around contemporary Brazilian collectible design—particularly at a moment when artisanal, constructive, and materially driven approaches regain prominence. Their participation reflects a shift in progress: a practice that reconfigures its geography, revisits its own language, and chooses Brazil—and the fair—as the stage for this presentation.