CHICAGO-Volume Gallery is pleased to announce Sam Stewart, Daisy Chain, opening September 16th from 5-8pm at 1709 W Chicago Ave, Chicago IL 60622.
Daisy Chain addresses the suburban home good, finding curiosity in its mundanity. Though not necessarily unique, the source material evokes a familiarity that can be sentimental. And yet, Stewart has recast these objects via modest shifts in scale, collapsing the American vernacular with American modernism. At what point in losing function or practicality does a chain become a screen, or a ladder a chaise lounge? And conversely, how many working details or weld marks does a designed object, or to put it more bluntly, a piece of furniture, allow for?
Positioned away from the walls, the works in Daisy Chain — a roof, a couch, a fence, a ladder, a trampoline — appear as a living room in slight disarray as if guests had moved the furniture around or, the works are just so indicatively animate.
In Daisy Chain, the roof is on the wall, its procession of miniature shingles, with its blunt bitumen glitter, recurrent and sobering. But then there are the two dormers pitched steeply downward, almost drooping. Sleepyhead undercuts its own logic with a little pareidolic joke. Extended Release is an array of vertical and horizontal oval-shaped segments that appear continuously slotted into each other at a 90-degree angle. Made of inflatable brown polyvinyl fabric, the work’s notched progression pays homage to Lincoln Logs. Stewart’s trampoline (Yeeted Image) sits tilted, reflecting the upper corner of the gallery. Privacy Screen does not really fulfill its namesake, except for at one specific spot. Made simply by welding each subsequent link, the chain stands with splayed feet, almost fantastically. Dad Joke operates similarly, an eight-foot straight aluminum ladder excised of two triangles and pushed together. The only evidence of its alteration is a lovely “stack of dimes” weld. Titled Lefty, a graduated stack of 12 lidded oval boxes, rising in a soothing selection of resins: faded burgundy, butter yellow, pewter blue, are a puckish (pudgy) homage to the bentwood originals that the Shakers made by hand.
Daisy Chain will be on view at Volume Gallery through October 29, 2022.
Sam Stewart (b. 1988, North Carolina) is a New York based artist whose work resembles and functions as household furniture and domestic objects. As sculptures, they often take on animistic qualities that border on the absurd and whimsical, but also the slightly perverse.
His forms, colors, and shifts in scale collapse observations of his present—from everyday New York spaces (drainage pipelines, subway seating), iconic 20th century design, and 3D modeling software—with those that evoke his memory of childhood perception. Although his source material tends to be specific (retro sets and costumes from children’s movies of the 80s and 90s, like Beetlejuice or Big, the mass produced palette of Fisher Price, the extruding and distorting tools of Google Sketch Up) and projects carefully researched (from the history of the execution chair and UFO spotting’s to virtual reality and 3D scanning technology), the objects themselves are aimed at a more visceral, bodily and emotive response akin to creating and reading a painted image.
He is interested in design that elicits a heightened simplicity and exaggerated satisfaction of looking, as much he wants to draw out awkward, more anecdotal encounters with the designed object.
Stewart’s studio practice involves meticulous attention to craftsmanship and working with fabricators and modes of production typically adopted by professionals in the field.
