Sebastian Errazuriz: Functional Sculpture / Sculptural Furniture

12 September - 24 October '14

New York

Cristina Grajales Gallery and Salon 94 are pleased to present Functional Sculpture / Sculptural Furniture by Chilean-born, New York-based artist designer Sebastian Errazuriz.

Errazuriz co-opts the standard design objects of our daily lives – a bike, a lamp, a table, a door, a swingset – and asks viewers to look again, to linger a little longer, and to question our accustomed design. Errazuriz re-makes familiar objects, adding humor, darkness, profanity, shock, provocation, obsession, and mortality. His interventions include: a lamp made by replacing the head of a taxidermied chicken with a lightbulb; a racing motorcycle where the engine doubles as an open casket for a small bird; swapping out the seat of a playground swingset for a child-size wheelchair. The irreverent and often shocking functional objects, can also be seen as memento mori furniture – works about our own mortality and our fragile bodies. There is often a wink and homage to a period style, art historical movement or authorial voice.

The dual exhibitions act as mirrors, turning known artworks into functional design and cabinets into theatrical, sculptural stages for objects. Re-visualizing and re-engineering the familiar pieces of our lives, Errazuriz turns them around and backwards, reflecting one another.