Kelly Wearstler x Arca — nudo-2-0-image-5

Partnership info

Overview

Location
Miami
Type
Product Collaboration
Year
2024

Two years after NUDO's debut, Wearstler returned to the same premise — weaving translated into stone — and asked a harder question of a different material. Marble had already proven a hard material could read as soft. Onyx was chosen to push further: a stone translucent enough to let light move through its own veining rather than simply reflect off it, the same knot logic now tested against a material that behaves nothing like the original.

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Kelly Wearstler x Arca — nudo-2-0-diptych-img-text-1

Creative Process

Every piece starts the same way: a digital exploration of helix forms and weaving patterns, rendered as a 3D miniature so the whole design is calibrated before a single block of stone gets selected. A robotic arm takes on the scale and precision no hand could manage — carving interior geometries into pieces of onyx large enough that scale alone becomes part of the sculpture — and then an artisan finishes every surface by hand, the only way to get the softness the collection depends on.

NUDO 2.0 folds new forms into that language: a Round Coffee Table on a continuous, undulating base; a Dining Table with curves that read like rock shaped by time rather than cut from it; a Lounge Chair built from flowing, parallel curves holding real tension between softness and strength; a Corrugated Bench with hollowed arches that let light and shadow move across the surface on their own. Even the Ping Pong Table pulls off its own quiet sleight of hand — a game table that becomes a dining table the moment the net comes off. Several pieces from the original NUDO also return in this collection, fully translated into onyx — the same forms, tested a second time in a material built to catch light rather than just shape it.

Kelly Wearstler x Arca — nudo-2-0-collage-layout-1
Kelly Wearstler Nudo Round Coffee Table — view 2
Kelly Wearstler x Arca — nudo-2-0-collage-layout-4

Creative Direction

NUDO 2.0's presentation at Art Basel Miami Beach 2024 played more like a gallery than a showroom: pieces set directly on the floor or raised on pedestals, inside rooms painted in shades of ochre chosen specifically to bring warmth to the stone. Where NUDO's debut asked people to touch the marble, this one asked them to slow down and look.

Kelly Wearstler x Arca — nudo-2-0-collage-layout-5
Kelly Wearstler x Arca — nudo-2-0-collage-layout-8
Kelly Wearstler x Arca — nudo-2-0-image-3
Kelly Wearstler x Arca — nudo-2-0-image-4
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Kelly Wearstler x Arca — nudo-2-0-image-5

Onyx possesses a translucence that beautifully interacts with natural light, highlighting its intricate banding and veining. It proved to be a mesmerizing material to experiment with.

Kelly Wearstler
Kelly Wearstler x Arca — nudo-2-0-image-7
Kelly Wearstler — BoF Voices — collage-layout-4

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