Like many of our subjects, Barcelona-based sculptor Carla Cascales Alimbau has one foot in the art world and one foot in design. The Spanish artist, who used to work for a large design corporation before developing her independent art practice in 2015, cites influences from furniture and architecture, including Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Alvar Aalto. And her materials palette includes offcuts from industrial manufacturing, such as broken or irregular pieces of marble, wood, or metal. But her sculptures are in fact functionless beauties, often mixing organic shapes with geometry, and the imperfections of nature with the purity of polished materials — “I am fascinated by the Japanese view of beauty, specifically by wabi-sabi and their admiration for the imperfect, mutable, and incomplete things,” says Alimbau. “It is so different from the admiration of perfection or the fear of passing time that we have in Western countries. I love to find the beauty in discarded pieces and give them new value.” Alimbau’s first solo show is currently open in Madrid at Castellana 22 Gallery until March 2.