NEW YORK, NY.- For 'Possible Matter,' her first New York exhibition with Hauser & Wirth, Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias debuts a new immersive dome installation alongside four wall-based sculptures from her new 'Possible Matter' series, exploring the shifting boundaries between the built and natural worlds. With this exhibition, Iglesias brings two strands of an extraordinary practice into captivating dialogue, moving between expansion and erosion, formation and dissolution, the exhibition considers the interplay between natural processes and human invention.
At the center of the exhibition is 'Dome' (2026), Iglesias's newest immersive work, following 'Aurora Borealis Star Dome' (2026), a major public commission she recently completed for the Princess Estelle Sculpture Park in Stockholm, Sweden. Measuring five meters (16 feet) across, 'Dome' consists of branch-like cast-aluminum arms that gradually merge into a geometric glass cupola. At its base, the aluminum structure bears the imprints of roots, living organisms and imagined biological forms; these patterns progressively transition into a crystalline geometry as the sculpture ascends, retaining the fractal patterns found in the natural world. Responding to the shifting daylight from the gallery's soaring fifth-floor skylight, the glass elements within the work cast an array of shimmering, colored beams across the room, altering the surrounding space as the light moves throughout the day.
Four wall-mounted sculptures, each titled 'Possible Matter' (2026), unite elements from two significant bodies of Iglesias's work: the organic, cast-aluminum volumes of her 'Entwined' series, initiated in 2018 and concentrated on rhizomatic growth, and the explorations of erosion in her 'Littoral' works, developed since 2022 from patterns found along the Basque shoreline. The intricate, undulating forms of the new sculptures, cast in aluminum and transparent resin and painted to match the surrounding walls, will appear to emerge from the architecture itself, their surfaces and openings evoking processes of erosion, accumulation and transformation over vast expanses of time. Both primordial and visionary, they recall ancient rock formations shaped over millennia and conjure speculative landscapes, collapsing distinctions between the distant past and an imagined future.
Reflecting on the evolution of these ideas in her recent work, Iglesias notes, 'my latest works deal more with transformation. You can see how matter transforms from very abstract into more geometric and crystalline forms. Nature has a tendency to organize itself. But you also have a sense of it being a non-organized system, in ways that cannot be understood.'
The works in 'Possible Matter' bring Iglesias's enduring exploration of the relationship between landscape and architecture, and our place within it, into sharp focus. Drawing on patterns found in rocks, water and vegetation, she has developed a singular approach to casting, assembling and reworking imprints and textures from nature, to create fantastical new forms and invented environments. While these works evoke timescales far beyond human experience, their physical presence anchors us in the here and now, drawing our attention to the spaces we inhabit. Her engagement with nature is inseparable from her highly intuitive approach to material, handling metal as a painter might work with oils––continually manipulating, refining and transforming the material into powerful, sensual and provocative works of art.
Iglesias pursued a degree in chemical sciences at the University of the Basque Country before studying ceramics and drawing in Barcelona. She then continued her studies at Chelsea School of Art, moving to London in 1980. This interdisciplinary approach and her interest in experimentation laid the foundations for her art. Iglesias returned to Spain from the UK in the early 1980s, where she developed a distinctive sculptural language of quasi-architectural forms that carved out precarious enclosures and shelters in dialogue with the exhibition space. Over the course of the 1990s, Iglesias' practice continued to evolve, fusing natural textures cast from vegetation with architectural forms. In 1993, she represented Spain at the Venice Biennale for a second time, showing alongside Antoni Tpies. She was appointed Professor of Sculpture at the Akademie der Bildenden Knste in Munich, Germany in 1995. She also created her first outdoor piece, an installation on the remote island of Moskenes in northern Norway, and realized her first architectural collaboration, a commission from Belgian architects Paul Robbrecht and Hilde Daem. Following this, Iglesias' focus shifted from the creation of architecture within rooms to the construction of rooms themselves.
Iglesias' work has been presented in more than 60 solo and group exhibitions around the world. She has created major public art commissions for Stockholm, Sweden; Antwerp, Belgium; Baja California, Mexico; Bloomberg Headquarters, London, UK; Instituto Inhotim, Brazil; Madison Square Park, New York NY; Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston TX; Toledo, Spain; Santa Clara Island, San Sebastin, Spain; Royal Academy of the Arts, London, UK and more. She has represented Spain at the Venice Biennale (1986, 1993), and participated in the Biennale of Sydney (1990, 2012), the Taipei Biennial (2003), the Carnegie International (2003), the SITE Sante Fe Biennial (2006) and the Folkestone Triennial (2011).
