I discovered this chair at the zero waste hub in Tollcross and thought back to works I’d seen before, specifically Joseph Kosuth’s ‘One and Three Chairs.’
I thought about the endless ways to document and define an object and how I needed a found, bought or owned object for my new Intermedia project. I then hauled this stupidly heavy chair (and a huge tin of baked beans) all the way down Lothian Road back to my flat by Haymarket station. It’s safe to say that the muscles in my arms really took a beating and weren’t up to scratch after these 7 months away.
I then did some research on artists who had documented, defined or just even used a chair in their artwork. I looked into artists like Joseph Beuys and his ‘Fat Chair’ and Vincent Van Goph’s ‘Van Gogh’s Chair‘ and how they both had a story or conveyed some sort of meaning. I thought about how an items context or the manipulation of an object can change the entire narrative of a piece. I also looked at the artist, Tatiane Freitas. I loved her work and how she makes sort of new old chairs. I really enjoy how “her designs restore functionality to the chair while acknowledging the history of each piece.”
I also was interested in how objects, in the right context and setting, can have cultural/ social impacts. This is what lead me to Daniel Berset’s monumental sculpture in Geneva: ‘Broken Chair.’
I found it interesting how just a broken leg on a chair could have such an important and strong message: “it depicts a giant chair with a broken leg… across the street from the Palace of Nations… it symbolises opposition to land mines and cluster bombs.”
Finally, I looked at a more abstract artist: Gaetano Pesce and his ‘Pratt Chairs.’ He has countless of these colourful, resin chairs that I was interested in. I find them strange and weirdly unsettling as they look like frozen slime or even warped cloth rather than chairs.
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