Most of us don’t think deeply about furniture — we may pay closer attention when a piece wears out, breaks or makes us uncomfortable. However, we develop intimate relationships with our furnishings. Chairs, couches, stools, desks, tables: Our bodies are constantly being supported by some piece of furniture. For example, the average American will spend 36 years in bed throughout their lifetime. Whether you realize it or not, the way we feel about a particular space or how we operationalize our daily activities is impacted significantly by furnishings. Whenever I go on extended backpacking trips I am always shocked at how much I miss sitting in a chair — a log or large stone is just not the same. Our familiarity and dependance on these everyday objects makes Jessi Reaves’ hybrid furniture/sculptures so compelling.
Reaves studied design and painting at the Rhode Island School, had a residency at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water and worked part-time for an upholsterer. This training gave her the tools and technical ability to make these wonderfully strange constructions. The work shown here, entitled Twice is Not Enough (Red to Green Chair), appears pregnant, lumpy and over-stuffed. The curved red interior is intimate and womb like while the edges seem exposed and worn. Her sculptural assemblages are intended to be ambiguous and at times contradictory — welcoming and comforting with enough tension to make you squirm. Curator Rebecca Matalon say this about Reaves’ art: “(Her) works offer up the domestic as untamed and calamitous, revealing and reveling in the wilderness of everyday life.”