Laurent Martin 'Lo' France, b. 1955

Laurent Martin “Lo”’s sculptural practice centres on the physical and poetic potential of bamboo. Guided by deep material knowledge and intuitive experimentation, he creates suspended structures that seem to hover in space, shaped by gravity, tension, and breath. Bamboo’s natural qualities, its organic architecture, elasticity, and quiet energy, form the foundation of his work. Each piece emerges through a slow, tactile process: the bamboo is split, shaped, and gently guided over months until it reaches its final form.

His sculptures trace soft arcs through the air, holding a delicate balance between opposing forces: flexibility and strength, fullness and void, movement and stillness. Ceramic spheres often appear as subtle counterweights, grounding the floating forms like small celestial bodies. In Lo’s hands, bamboo becomes a language of equilibrium, a way of connecting earth and air, material and motion.

Born in Paris and trained at ENSAD, Lo spent many years working in advertising and fashion before a chance encounter with bamboo reshaped both his life and artistic direction. In 2004, he stepped away from his previous career to begin a nomadic journey along what he describes as the “bamboo belt”, an imaginary line circling the tropics, linking cultures across the Americas and Asia through this shared material. Living alongside local communities and collaborating with architects and artisans, he absorbed ancestral techniques and philosophies, approaching bamboo not simply as a resource, but as a living medium.

Today, Lo lives and works in L’Empordà and exhibits internationally. His work has been shown at major fairs and institutions and is held in significant public and private collections. Rooted in tradition yet guided by intuition, his practice continues to evolve through a quiet dialogue between craft, nature, and form.