CHICAGO – Volume Gallery is pleased to present the Wrong Chairs by design collaborative Norman Kelley, opening November 15th with a reception from 6-8PM at 845 West Washington Blvd, Chicago, IL 60607.
Norman Kelley’s Wrong Chairs purposefully disrupt the notion of “correctness” through the iconic Windsor chair. The Windsor chair, with its British roots, has become a symbol of colonial America – chairs that are democratic in design, occupying both domestic and public spaces. “At first glance, these are Windsors; they blend into the images we hold of domestic places we’ve encountered at some point or another, but, at second glance, they’re more unreasonable,” says NK.
In using an object readily recognized and imbedded with nostalgia, NK utilizes the Windsor chair as the control – a seemingly ordinary object – for the exploration of “wrongness”.
Inspired by deceptive optics and adapting specifications from expert craftsman John Kassay’s drawings of 18th and 19th century Windsor chairs, NK plays on optical illusions, taunting the viewer to take a second glance by exploring the visual boundaries of anamorphism, trompe l’oeil, and forced perspective.
“In our work, and with this project in particular, we’re interested in what motivates a double take, or a closer look,” explains NK. In provoking the observer to confront a traditional object transformed with intended “wrongness”, NK resituates the historic Windsor chair through a contemporary lens that is at once defective while retaining functionality.
The exhibition features a medley of seven Windsor chairs fabricated. Each chair is strategically defective, to comment on the ability for an object to be, at once, both wrong and right. While deviating from the original design and appearing broken or unbalanced, the chairs are structurally sound. NK concludes, “as architects, what we typically perceive as being wrong with design hinges on geometric imprecision or a lack of command over tolerances; we concede that most things are susceptible to being wrong. Our aim is to discipline that potential to provoke new forms of making and observation”.
