Carpenters Workshop Gallery Paris presents From a distance, an exhibition of new works by Batten and Kamp, the collaborative art and design practice founded by New Zealand-born, Paris-based couple Alexandra Batten and Daniel Kamp. This exhibition explores themes of place and memory, with works that echo the designers’ belief in the future and longing for what is left behind.

Batten and Kamp embody a new generation of makers reshaping the landscape of collectible design. Using digital experimentation to respond to nature, the duo challenges conventions, bridging craftsmanship with contemporary culture. Their new projects act as catalysts for evolution, where traditional expertise meets radical new creative movements.

Echo is a new series of hanging light sculptures in which minimalistic fixtures suspend aluminium replicas of branches that the designers gathered from the sites of natural disasters in their respective hometowns in New Zealand. At once delicate and brutal, these jewellery-like sculptures recall light passing through a canopy of trees, or as the designers reflect, “apparitions from a forgotten forest”. The organic silhouettes of the branches stand in stark contrast to the precisely engineered light structures that frame them, producing an interplay of nature and technology, memory and transformation.

Titan lounger – mercury is a minimalistic lounge chair that one may expect to find bolted to the rocky surface of a distant planet. A cast aluminium seat with a texture reminiscent of a cratered lunar landscape grips a rough-cut Aurazina marble boulder with stainless steel fixings. The work’s apparent hardness belies its surprising comfort, achieved through highly considered ergonomics. Contrasting raw stone against materials associated with aerospace, the piece is at once ancient and extraterrestrial, channelling the designers’ dual interests in the past and the future.

Since 2020, Batten and Kamp have been building a creative universe of functional sculptures drawing on influences ranging from science fiction to prehistory, mixing industrial materials with naturally occurring forms. This exhibition highlights the duo’s shared sensibility and unique aesthetic language informed both by their years in the cyberpunk metropolis of Hong Kong and their childhoods in the serene natural landscapes of New Zealand.