Now open at Gallery FUMI in London, Rubber Rocks marks the first solo exhibition by design duo Study O Portable (Bernadette Deddens and Tetsuo Mukai) with the gallery. The show presents a newly developed body of work that playfully probes the boundaries between permanence and impermanence, through objects made not from granite, but rubber eraser.
Cast and hand-sculpted from silicone rubber, marble dust, and pigment, the pieces mimic weathered stone architectural elements, evoking ruined temples, classical monuments, and the ghosts of granite. Stools, armchairs, consoles, and planters appear worn by time, but are in fact soft, pliable, and resolutely contemporary.
The material paradox is central to the exhibition. Granite suggests permanence and power; the rubber eraser implies correction, adjustment, even disappearance. Rubber Rocks collapses these polarities into objects that feel both enduring and fleeting, products of imagination as much as geology.
The eraser, ever-present on an architect’s desk, becomes a symbol of the iterative process behind all creative practices. In the hands of Study O Portable, it’s scaled up, recontextualized, and imbued with poetic force. Referencing everything from ancient ruins to modern studio rituals, Rubber Rocks is both conceptually rich and materially witty, an exploration of how we design, destroy, and begin again.
Rubber Rocks is on view now at Gallery FUMI, London, from May 15, 2025
