Poli-Piel: Jorge Penadés Serrano’s First Solo Show at Gallery Machado-Muñoz in Madrid.

Madrid-based designer Jorge Penadés has kept up his innovative exploration of left-over leather with a new eight-piece collection of furniture slash objet d’art. Equal parts artistic and inventive; the series builds upon his Structural Skin concept and pushes the potential of leather as a sturdy structural material. Called Poli-Piel, it was presented as part of Madrid Design Festival in February, and is currently being exhibited at Gallery Machado-Muñoz in Madrid.

In the collection are a valet, coffee table, side table, chair, mirror, two table lamps, and a tray. Each piece in the series features recycled leather elements: scraps, straps, or planks or blocks of Jorge’s Structural Skin. These blocks are made from waves of maroon and tan recycled leather scraps, which have been crushed and then mixed and hardened using an all-natural binder (no toxic glues or solvents).

For Jorge, Poli-Piel is a research exercise on leather’s pretty interesting structural possibilities. Straps, ratchets and studs replace screws and joining systems – the bases of the table lamps are made from high-quality brown leather curled into a spiral, leather buckles are the joints of the glass side table, and planks of Structural Skin are stacked as the base of the coffee table. As much as it is an artistic environmental experiment, it’s also a polished presentation of material ingenuity – unexpected, outside the box, challenging – and beautiful.

Poli-Piel exhibition runs until March 10th at Gallery Machado-Muñoz in Madrid.

Related:
Structural Skin Mirror by Jorge Penadés.
Jorge Penadés Transforms Offcuts From Leather Factories into Structural Skin.

[Images courtesy of Jorge Penadés Serrano. Photography by Gonzalo Machado.]