Yury Goncharov’s work as a designer and engineer brings together technology, craftsmanship, and a strong interest in sculptural form. After more than two decades working in industrial design and fabrication, he has developed an independent practice focused on collectible furniture, objects, and installations.
Goncharov's designs are easily recognizable: fluid shapes, smooth curves, reflective surfaces, and unexpected proportions. The otherworldly forms of his chairs, mirrors, and other objects still remain grounded in the tactility of making.
His background in engineering plays is important to his approach. For him, technology is not simply a tool for production but a way to explore new possibilities in shape and space. He combines digital modelling, hand sculpting, and advanced materials with CNC machining—a computer-controlled process that allows complex forms to be cut and shaped with precision. These technologies enable him to create forms that would be difficult to achieve otherwise.
A good example is Alta Metallic Mota, a sculptural armchair created in 2025. With its flowing shape and mirror-like metallic finish, the chair seems to be in motion even when standing still. Goncharov developed the design around ideas of potential and kinetic energy, the rotation of the Earth, and Newton's laws. The original form was sculpted by hand, refined digitally, CNC-milled, and finished and polished manually. The chair was presented at design events in Toronto before appearing at Good Selection during Milan Design Week 2025.
Karnak Side Tables by Yury Goncharov
Goncharov's interest in movement is obvious in the Spin Low Coffee Table, where rotation becomes the central idea. The table explores how a sense of motion can be created within a static object. Its layered form recalls the frozen folds of Andy Warhol's films, where movement is suggested not through actual motion but through light and perception. Here, the designer turns a physical object into an optical experience, asking the viewer to imagine movement where there is none.
Elsewhere, Goncharov looks to history and landscape as sources for contemporary form. The Karnak Side Tables take inspiration from the Temple of Karnak, built around four thousand years ago in ancient Egypt. The tables' glossy lacquered surfaces evoke the Nile, while their silhouettes recall both the temple and its reflection in the water as it appears today.
This dialogue between physical form and deeper symbolism is particularly evident in De Vita Ad Vitam: The Mirror as a Philosophical Object. Goncharov approaches the mirror as more than a functional object: a surface that stands between the external and internal worlds, and a long-standing symbol of self-awareness, transformation, and duality.
Yury Goncharov with pieces from the De Vita ad Vitam series in the background
The piece takes the shape of Lake Kinneret, a body of water associated with biblical history and the story of Christ walking on its waters. Goncharov's own journey through the landscapes of Lake Kinneret, the Jordan River, and the Dead Sea became part of the work's concept. The mirror follows the movement of water between these places as a metaphor for transformation and renewal.
Its materials reinforce this idea. The reflective surface represents Lake Kinneret; noble tin flowing from it evokes the Jordan River; and a walnut base represents the Dead Sea. Turquoise resin creates a sense of depth, while delicate rings of tin across the wooden surface suggest ripples and the passage of time. The contrast between reflective metal, translucent resin, and warm walnut brings together the ephemeral and the tangible.
For Goncharov, the mirror ultimately becomes a question rather than simply an object: does the world we see correspond to the world within us?
Yury Goncharov, Alina Tacmelova. The Tree of Cinema, 2026
Yury Goncharov also works on large-scale installations that invite the audience to become part of the work. One of his latest projects is The Tree of Cinema, a monumental public installation created with artist Alina Tacmelova for the Toronto International Film Festival 2026.
The installation asks how the experience of cinema can be translated into a physical structure. At its centre is a steel trunk representing the structural and technological foundations of filmmaking. Rising from it is a canopy of flowing film strips, combining iconic moments from cinema history with images of audiences watching, laughing, and reflecting.
The project transforms memory, emotion, and collective experience, intangible by nature, into material, scale, and space. It is also designed to be experienced from different perspectives. Visitors can walk around and beneath the structure, becoming physically part of the installation and the story it represents.
Across furniture, mirrors, and installations, Goncharov moves between the physical and the imagined, the ancient and the contemporary, the static and the kinetic. His objects often begin with a simple question—about movement, reflection, memory, or human experience—and translate it into form. Engineering and digital fabrication give these ideas a precise physical language, while craftsmanship brings them back to the senses.
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