In Henri Iglesis’s work, lightness is not merely perceived—it is breathed in. The Catalan artist, born in Perpignan in 1964, infuses his sculptures with a vibrant paradox: the weight of weathered metal suddenly becomes lighter under the invisible momentum of the air. Visual lightness, of course, but above all the lightness of a dreamlike, colorful, and carefree world, where every form seems to float between dream and reality.

As a child, Henri spent hours in his father’s workshop—his father was a lathe operator and fitter—listening to this precious advice: “Don’t touch anything; just watch, and you’ll learn.” ” From this silent transmission sprang his deep attachment to manual labor and to metals—a material and cultural heritage he would shape throughout his life.

Trained as a boilermaker and welder, he worked for many years in a workshop before the intuition behind a single gesture changed the course of his career. In 2008, while creating a statue for his son, he came up with the idea of injecting air into a piece of sheet metal that had been welded together beforehand. From this experiment sprang a novel technique—air-blown sheet metal, now a registered trademark—which would become his signature style.

Thanks to this unique process, Henri Iglesis sculpts forms brimming with whimsy, humor, and vitality. His minimalist works, inflated with air and imagination, seem to defy even the weight of metal itself. They open up a space of freedom where childhood, poetry, and surprise come together in a single breath.