Arts preview: Los Carpinteros turn confusion into an art form

You're not alone: the duo behind Cuban-born, primarily Madrid-based collective Los Carpinteros are just as confused about the delirious blend of art, design and architecture in their sometimes functional and often playful body of work as everyone else.

"The functionality of the things we make is fascinating, because we're totally confused about it," says Dagoberto Rodríguez Sánchez, who formed Los Carpinteros in 1991 with Marco Antonio Castillo Valdés, and Alexandre Jesus Arrechea Zambrano, who left the group in 2003. "Sometimes we don't know the nature of the things that we produce. We have the intuition to make the logical [decisions], but we don't know the consequences."

The duo are presenting two recent lines of work at their first solo exhibition in Asia: large-scale watercolour drawings that depict chaotic, imaginary structures built with Lego blocks, and prototype sculptures of "reading room" architecture, which the artists derived from philosopher Michel Foucault's idea of the panopticon prison, before subverting its surveillance principle, and adapting it for library building purposes.

Both series explore the idea of space, and have a long history in Los Carpinteros' oeuvre. Sánchez jokes that the selection of the drawings stems from the fact that "we're in the mood of Lego". It is a theme that aptly corresponds to the duo's fascination with construction materials, such as bricks and cinder blocks.

"These scenarios have been made to make you feel small. We want to give the feeling of isolation that happens in the human life today," says Sánchez.