The lawn chair sculptures of Patrick McDonough
Patrick McDonough’s lawn chairs are not meant for sitting. And if they begin to seem functional, well, it’s all pretend. The sculptures offer the formal concepts of lawn chairs without actually closing the deal — legs and armrests have gone missing, for starters, and the works themselves are decidedly non functional. Instead of functionality McDonough is interested in their allusions to an American iconography of leisure. Take a look at them and it’s not difficult to imagine the smell of freshly cut grass or the skyward boom of summertime fireworks. It’s part of what the artist describes as his overarching interest in the aesthetics of free time. But there’s something else that’s also at work here; each piece has a significant stake in pure color, in hard edged geometry, and in the rectangular chromatic plane. You won’t need to dig too deep before you start thinking of abstract painting.
According to Patrick…“Painting often functions as the shorthand to talk
about art with a capital ‘A,’ so it’s really nice when these lawn chairs
can relate so explicitly to painting, when I was making the chairs I
was thinking more broadly of aesthetic issues and not particularly as a
way to reference painting. But yeah, it’s an object on the wall. And
it’s like an icon that you have to click through to get to the rest of
‘Art’. And that’s true for beginning collectors or for critical
dialogue. It just continues to be the case.”
Comments
Post a Comment