Class 1977, born in Chile but raised in America, Sebastian Errazuriz is a well-rounded artist. We have recently seen him at TEDx Martha’s Vineyard with his touching and introspective speech, Step back and look again, in which he explains his personal approach to art and design. His research certainly can’t be put in just one box, no matter how big it is: he is very aware of this and he tries to define the linguistic boundaries of his “creatures”, forcing them in 6 subcategories ranging from artistic abstraction to design functionality.
Magistral Cabinet and Magistral Chest are scratching sculptures with a functional soul, egocentric but discreet. Halfway between domestic wooden hedgehogs and the UK Pavilion of Shanghai 2010 designed by Heatherwick Studio, the Magistrals force the viewers to get lost into the over 80.000 spines (entirely handcrafted by a group of 12 cabinet-makers) which hold inside their personal effects. It’s an ironic representation of the line between art and design, functionality and symbolism, a subject strictly connected to the artist’s work.
From now on, the spines of the Chilean artist expand and transform: a Darwinian evolution from destabilizing tinsel to ribs protecting and emphasizing their content. The constant experimentation in opening systems and sliding shutters is very clear in Samurai Cabinet in which 400 moving elements in lacquered maple wood, independent from one another, create a permeable skeleton that can be arranged in endless ways.
A tectonic turmoil, a tsunami of pure (white) freshness, this is Wave.
Rigorous in his innocent inanimate anonymity, reckless and surprising when the hand shapes its trajectories. Sebastian Errazuriz with this sculptural furniture, like he himself calls it, puts a new spin on the concept of dynamism, educating the viewer about not living the house in a passive way.
Also Explosion, a controlled deflagration of maple staves which extends on the edge of stability, is part of the collection presented at his solo exhibition Look Again, at the Carnegie Museum of Art of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) which closes the 12th of January.
Thanks to his meticulous interactive furniture, Sebastian Errazuriz surprises the user, challenges and is committed every time, asking the viewers to rethink the everyday life in order to deal with its caducity and challenge the status quo. A talent, Errazuriz’s, highlighted by his ability to be at the same time shocking and irreverent, a sensible tangibility.
