LOS ANGELES, CA.- Carpenters Workshop Gallery presents Rust Never Sleeps, a new exhibition by Rick Owens Furniture, curated by Michèle Lamy. Taking its title from Neil Youngs 1979 anthem the exhibition transforms the phrase into a manifesto for artistic endurance: it is better to burn out than to fade away.
For Lamy and Owens, rust becomes a metaphor for creative resistance a material language that rejects the corrosion of time. What appears decayed is, in truth, resilient; what seems eroded reveals unexpected strength. In this alchemy of oxidation, rust is not the mark of decline but a proof of life evolving, alive, and enduring.
The works in Rust Never Sleeps advance Owens exploration of primal materiality and architectural form. Among the highlights, the Antler Bed (2025) shown publicly for the first time embodies a cycle of renewal. Crafted from recycled elm wood, its organic surface carries the vitality of the material itself: living, flawed, and raw. The piece continues Owens legacy from the Pompidou series (2019), building a nest from what has come before.
The dialogue between permanence and impermanence deepens in Double Bubble (2025), where rusted steel and graphite crocodile leather engage in a tactile conversation between the elemental and the animal. Similarly, the monumental K Plug Table (2022) revisits a form first prototyped by Lamy from Owens sketches a continuous study in balance and bronze. Finally, Pedalò Rust (2025), with its distinctive steel patina and camel leather cushions, captures the exhibitions pulse: each rust pattern a record of times passage, every surface a map of transformation.
In Rust Never Sleeps, decay is reimagined as persistence. The creeping corrosion of time becomes an act of defiance an artists refusal to fade. Through these works, Owens and Lamy reveal that in rust there is not ruin, but renewal: strength forged through oxidation.