John Procario’s looping light sculptures and curved furniture will take over two galleries at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design this autumn, as the American designer prepares for his first solo museum exhibition. Opening on 27 October 2026 and running until 4 April 2027, John Procario: Freeforms – Sculptural Explorations in Wood and Light examines a practice built on knowing just how much a piece of wood can take.
That knowledge was not acquired gently. While developing his process, Procario spent months deliberately breaking wood, learning where flexibility gives way to failure. His finished works retain something of that negotiation: long, taut curves that seem improbably relaxed considering what the material has been through.
Procario works with freeform bentwood lamination, bending thin layers of wood and bonding them into lasting shapes. Flexible LED strips are incorporated into the resulting forms, allowing illumination to follow the curves. The technology gives him a way to carry light through a sculpture without interrupting its line with a conventional lamp fitting.
It also makes the relationship between the wood and the light unusually close. The curves determine where the illumination travels, while the glow draws attention to the material’s twists and changes of direction. What looks like a loose gesture depends on considerable control.
The exhibition’s two galleries will give that relationship different settings. According to the advance exhibition materials, the first will be painted deep black, bringing the outlines of suspended sculptures and wall sconces into focus. Finishes will range from black and navy to metallic copper, offering variations within a recognisable family of forms.
The second gallery will move into bright white, with metallic wall coverings from Dedar and furniture from Procario’s Sculptural Seating series. Here, the curves developed in his lighting become sofas and new ottomans. A line that can hang freely overhead has rather more to answer for when somebody sits on it.
The presentation will also include a nearly seven-foot-tall freestanding light sculpture from the Basin series and a collaborative work with designer Alex Roskin. Together, the lighting and furniture show how Procario adapts his approach as scale, support and function change.
His interest in those physical questions began early. Procario grew up around his father’s carpentry workshop, later studying sculpture in graduate school, where he began to think about wood in relation to the human body. Its capacity to bend, resist and eventually break became a means of exploring gesture and strain. “Just as we push the limits of our own bones and muscles, I enjoy pushing the limits of wood to create a sense of tension within its gesture,” Procario says in the exhibition materials.
For visitors, that gesture will depend partly on where they stand. Walking around the works changes the relationship between their overlapping curves, revealing openings and crossings that a single photograph cannot fully explain. Their apparent movement comes from a fixed object and a moving viewer, a modest arrangement with a surprisingly complicated result.
John Procario: Freeforms – Sculptural Explorations in Wood and Light will be on view at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, from 27 October 2026 to 4 April 2027, with support from Todd Merrill Studio and additional support from Dedar Milano.
