Installation of Alex Rasmussen sculpture at Lotusland, 2021
Alex Rasmussen’s work traverses the boundary between sculpture and design. For the past thirty years, he has worked as a highly successful and sought after industrial designer of luxury furniture and architectural features as well as case designs for all manner of devices. He is also the third-generation of Rasmussens to helm Neal Feay – a cutting edge aluminum design and fabrication company in Goleta, California widely known for its prowess with Annofax aluminum anodization as well as for its cutting edge use of computer aided design and manufacturing. In particular, they are recognized pioneers for their color work, though they are just likely to be contracted today for their sophisticated design and inspired engineering.
Much of Alex’s career has been an insider secret. Among the design world cognoscenti, he is already very well known. In high-end audio, for example, he has developed design languages for many of the industry’s leading companies. He has also been invited to collaborate on design and manufacture for other luminaries such as Jony Ive, Marc Newson, Holly Hunt, Louis Vuitton, David Weeks, Kenzo, Johanna Grawunder, and Opening Ceremony. More recently, he has worked with Noe Duchaufour Lawrence and Guillaume Delvigne of Hermes. He has also worked with Thierry Gaugain and Eugeni Quitlett. Architect/designers Rafael de Cardenas and William Hefner and architects Shubin Donaldson and Marc Appleton are in the mix, too. For years now, he has been a regular fixture at the Design Miami fair that coincides with the Miami Basel art fair as well as the Fog Design+Art fair in San Francisco.
During the last decade, he has become increasingly involved with other artists. Among these, he counts the late Peter Alexander, Miya Ando, David Flores, Gary Lang, John Millei, Laurie Frick, and Mary Heebner as friends and colleagues.
Hyper attentive to the tiniest of details – how reflected light moves along the edge of a sculpture, how a carefully designed and machined texture can imbue his work with a sense of movement and vitality, or how a modulation measured in the thousandths of an inch might impart a sense of absolute aesthetic harmony – Alex’s work chases perfection with rare rigor and determination.
Today, his sculpture practice is ascendant. His sculpture is currently represented by Sullivan Goss, but he has also been part of numerous exhibitions and sold a variety of bespoke furniture and other design items through Edward Cella Art + Architecture as well as Gallerie Triode in Paris.
1:07
27:18 | Video of the Artist | Created for the SuperYacht Design Symposium Cortina 2019
11: 21 | Video of the artist | Created for Brainstorming Design, 2018
4:42 | Narrated by Jeremy Tessmer | Released for CA COOL: what's so cool about california?, 2015

Two exhibits of note have opened at Sullivan Goss: Paintings by Robin Gowen (including “Cloud Haze,” below), and The Fateful Eight, a group show of “heavy-hitting pieces by some of the gallery’s most coveted artists of past and present,” including Alex Rasmussen’s “‘Round Midnight” (further below).
The legendary gardens of Ganna Walska’s Lotusland get the spotlight when Sullivan Goss Gallery presents a benefit exhibition, the Jardin Des Rêves, or Garden of Dreams, on view from June 27 to July 28. The exhibition features “dreamy” works from 31 local and regional artists inspired by their experiences in the legendary gardens in Montecito.
LAST month I wrote about Storm King, the art center in the Hudson Valley in New York dedicated to outdoor sculpture. I loved it. I realized then that I hadn’t profiled a living, breathing, working sculptor, so today I’ll write about Alex Rasmussen, a Santa Barbara sculptor who works in aluminum.
... Rasmussen is a case study in inventive, contemporary sculpture. He sculpts not stone or wood or plaster or wax or bronze or concrete but aluminum, and he knows it well.
EDUCATION
BA Business Administration, University of Southern California
OUTSIDE PRESS
"Designed by Alex Rasmussen: California Industrial Design as Fine Art" by Mark Ewing, Forbes.
"World View: Letter from California" by Tilly Macalister-Smith, Wallpaper.
EXHIBITIONS
2021 Organic, Sullivan Goss - An American Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA
2019 Between worlds, Edward Cella Art+Architecture, Los Angeles, CA
2019 Synesthesia, Borromeo & De Silva, Milan, Italy
2019 Guillaume Delvigne X Neal Feay, Transatalantic Creative Exchange, WantedDesign, Brooklyn, NY
2017 Something Real, Edward Cella Art & Architecture, Los Angeles, CA
2016 FOG Design + Art, Edward Cella Art + Architecture, San Francisco, CA
2016 Wallpaper*Handmade Arcade, Salone de Mobile, Milan, Italy
2016 Transatlantic Collaboration (with Noé Duchaufour Lawrance), Wanted Design, Brooklyn NY
2015 CA Cool, Sullivan Goss - An American Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA
2015 FOG Design + Art, Edward Cella Art + Architecture, San Francisco, CA
2015 Le Cabinet of Curiosities de Thomas Erber, Paris, France
2015 London Design Festival, Somerset House, London England
2015 Grand Hornu Musée, Boussu, Belgium
2015 Mona Bismarck American Center of Arts and Culture, Paris France
2015 Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA
2015 American Design in Paris, Mona Bismarck American Center for the Arts and Culture, Paris, France
2014 David Weeks Studio, New York, NY
