Raul De Lara’s Sculptures Ask What Separates Raw Material, Medium and Meaning
The earliest forms of human creation transformed natural elements into objects endowed with symbolic meaning. Today, some artists still use ancient modes of production like woodcarving to consider the relationship between human making and nature. Mexican-born, Queens-based artist Raul De Lara is one of them, having chosen wood as his medium and carving as his practice early on. His sculptures intentionally inhabit the fluid space between furniture, sculpture and architecture, with wood serving as a living material capable of taking different forms. Some of those forms can be seen in the windows of Hermès Madison Avenue maison, where De Lara has created a fully imaginative environment, bringing together sculptural objects, retail products, architecture and urban references. Titled “The Secret Lives of Objects,” the whimsical installation brings together some of the “silent roommates” that adorn our homes and help define our sense of place and identity.
When we caught up after the installation’s unveiling, De Lara explained that his recent work has moved beyond the individual sculptural object toward a more expansive consideration of how objects relate to one another and to the materials surrounding them. His recent solo exhibitions have all exemplified this approach, even as galleries continue to ask for individual pieces, which can feel decontextualized. “I think that’s something I’ve definitely been exploring over the years in my work,” he told Observer. “It’s not often I get a chance to create a world, but it’s where my practice is leaning into.”
This is not the first time De Lara has collaborated with the brand. In 2023, he created a sculptural window installation for the opening of its Aspen boutique, staging an environment inhabited by a rocking cactus, a carved chair, a large oak leaf and anthropomorphic garden tools. Rather than treating the commission as a commercial departure from his artistic practice, he sees it as an opportunity to explore how his sculptural language expands into architecture, the urban environment and the world of luxury craftsmanship.
A key factor in De Lara’s approach to art-making is the imaginative exercise of anthropomorphizing ordinary objects to reveal their inner lives. Guiding his practice is a fundamental question: when does a piece of wood stop being merely a material and become an object with a personality, a history or even a spirit?
“A lot of the motifs I’ve been doing in the past few years are what I call our silent roommates, which include your houseplants, furniture, objects that accompany our daily life,” he explained. “A lot of my work reflects my interest in bringing personalities to these seemingly inanimate objects. When do they come to life? What does that spark of life look like?”
De Lara’s relationship with wood began in childhood. Growing up in Mexico, he spent time in the woodshop attached to his father’s architectural firm, where furniture was produced for select clients. His mother also worked as an interior decorator, while other family members were involved in architecture, engineering and design. “Conversations around materiality and world-building and storytelling through objects have always been part of my life,” he said. “And with wood, I’ve been around it for most of my life. I have been interested in it since I was a child.”
He also has Italian roots: his mother comes from Perugia, so his family is spread across Italy, Spain and Mexico. Guasco, his other family name, is Italian, and his upbringing exposed him to traditions of woodcarving from both Mexico and Italy, particularly the production of religious sculptures and saints. Growing up surrounded by wooden saints prompted him to wonder at what point in the carving process a piece of wood acquired a spiritual presence, and the question continues to inform his work: “As an adult now, I think about that. When do you go from being a branch or a piece of wood to being a saint? When is the carving? Is it the tools? Is it the place? Is it the material? Is it the person? Is it faith? What is it?”
This type of reflection is precisely what makes De Lara’s practice so relevant, particularly at a time of growing sensory and emotional alienation, amid the threat of A.I. overtaking human capacities. More and more, people are interrogating the value of that which is most deeply human. De Lara’s approach to making reminds us of this vital neurobiological and existential relationship, increasingly denied by a productive system that has progressively dematerialized human experience, reducing it to a sequence of immaterial acts and stimuli—something that has legitimized the very notion of artificial intelligence, raising questions about its potential consciousness. By contrast, the act of carving wood reenacts an intimate encounter with matter, with the material world as the hand touches it, engaging the mind and creative imagination in a dialectical process of signification and symbolization that, so far, only humans are capable of.
As suggested by Richard Sennett’s studies of labor, the act of craftsmanship and the manipulation of matter respond to an ontological need: to merge the mind with the object. Cognitive capitalism and the new, radically tech-enhanced Cartesian divide between mind and body have instead severed this connection, legitimizing an encounter with the world only through its simulacra within digital space. Making by hand requires another sensibility, another emotional intelligence that originates in a direct encounter and attunement with matter and its cycles of transformation, as humans can recreate and facilitate the very miracle of creation through their making.
De Lara also sees carving as connected to an ancestral history of making and the human capacity to invest objects with meaning beyond their immediate physical existence. It is rooted in the ancient notion of techne, which preceded technology as a way of engaging with the elements of our surroundings through the creativity that makes us inherently human. “I think people who work with their hands—and anyone, really—should at least once in their life experience what it’s like to think through your hands, to think with materials, because it connects you with everything,” he reflected. “I find a lot of fun on a personal level making these forms, because they’re exercises in engineering, they’re exercises in composition, material, narrative.” It is the process of making that becomes meaning-making, beginning in the realm of sensory experience and proceeding through the unconscious imagination and symbolization that underpin human mental and creative activity.
He pointed to his experience of migration and his complicated immigration status in the United States as important influences on his practice. Originally from Mexico, De Lara immigrated to Austin more than 20 years ago and lived without documentation for approximately eight years before entering the DACA program, under which he has spent roughly another 12. “I was only able to leave the United States once in my life, and I cannot freely travel abroad or return to Mexico,” he said. These circumstances have prompted him to explore questions of roots, multinational identity, home and belonging through his work. Reenacting this act of working with wood, shared with his family and passed down as a tradition through generations, is also part of a genuine attempt to anchor his existence and his navigation of reality in something stable, ancestral and collective, providing a sense of grounding and belonging even when one does not know where one belongs. In this sense, his recurring motif of potted plants evokes this liminal state: rooted and able to flourish again, even beyond their original environment.
When we spoke, De Lara was preparing to present at the Armory Show with Alexander Berggruen in a duo booth where his new sculptures would be paired with paintings by Madeline Peckenpaugh. Just a few weeks earlier, he opened his first institutional solo exhibition in Texas at The Contemporary Austin, on view through January 11, 2027. This year has been an important period of growth in his practice, not only in terms of achievements but also because he began identifying new ways of working. His engagement with wood is no longer limited to the technical act of carving: it intentionally and purposefully extends to the material’s origin, its previous existence as a living organism and the possibilities of transforming it without entirely erasing its natural character.
A key element for him is paying attention to the natural color of wood and using its inherent characteristics to transform it into new shapes, with minimal artificial intervention and reduced toxins and other unnecessary additions. More generally, De Lara has also started paying closer attention to the sources of his materials to make his production truly sustainable and respectful of nature and its cycles. For instance, he now works with suppliers who recover trees cleared from fields and construction sites rather than cutting down new ones. “It’s a really beautiful opportunity that I get to give these trees a life again, and in a shape that they’re kind of familiar with,” he said, acknowledging the poetry inherent in this process.
For the Hermès Maison window, De Lara took inspiration from his favorite tree in Central Park. “Every fall, I go visit him for inspiration as it gives off the most beautiful leaves,” he recounts. “I collected 6 of them and used their shape to create the large wooden leaves you see here.” Using a variety of wood types allowed him to capture the fall’s color range. Asked why all his work returns to nature, he suggested that it is simply the most natural thing to do. It’s a way of recovering our sense of being in the world. “There’s something about nature that’s been teaching me how to create silhouettes, how to work with form, how to think with negative space. How to create and navigate the space,” he considered. “I think there’s a reason why, for the entire lineage of our history, nature has been a subject matter, you know, because it’s infinite, because it’s very real and surreal, because it’s beautiful, because it’s terrible, because it’s full of so much content that is already there for us.”
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