Ricci Albenda

Ricci Albenda was born in New York in 1966, where he currently lives and works.

Ricci Albenda’s work explores the relationship between space, perception, and language through site-specific interventions, sculptures, and paintings. His works profoundly transform the spaces they inhabit by introducing imagined geometric forms that nevertheless appear to belong naturally to their surroundings. Hovering between reality and fiction, they disrupt the viewer’s sense of orientation and challenge how space is identified and understood.

During his residency at Atelier Calder, the artist created a sculpture in several scales as part of his series of suspended monumental sculptures called Universe (2011). Evoking an architectural ensemble perceived as a whole, the work was woven from willow in collaboration with David Drew, a basket maker based in Villaines-les-Rochers. This material, both flexible and resilient, enabled the artist to translate an initial drawing into a precisely crafted three-dimensional form. Accessible from within, its deliberately ambiguous scale blurs the boundaries between real and imagined architecture, immersing viewers in an experience that continually challenges their spatial perception.