Elbow Room
Elbow Room is an exhibition featuring prototypes by 14 independent furniture makers and designers who are connected by a mutual devotion to quality of craft. The group shares a common interest in exploring the broad grey area where principles of craft, art and design operate in tandem with each other. This exhibition invites the collective to turn to the body for inspiration, a practice deeply rooted in art and craft tradition.
Makers will explore the idea of domestic objects and furniture as extensions and reflections of the human body. The exhibition features a diversity of idiosyncratic objects, each one reflecting the individual aesthetic inclinations of the maker. Some of the work will emulate the body’s asymmetrical, compositional anomalies. Other pieces will focus on specific material properties of the body, from the mechanical rotation of a joint in its socket to the visual tension created by skin stretched tightly over boney protrusions. Certain prototypes reference bodily gestures - a barely discernible slouch, an outstretched limb - in hopes of evoking the vague emotional responses that accompany human interaction. In each case, participants in Elbow Room consider subtle ways in which furniture and objects echo humanity.
The group invites viewers to join us in contemplating the relationship between our objects and ourselves – do objects reminiscent of skin, bone and flesh elicit a visceral response of comfort or distress? Do we increase the potential for intimate connection with the objects around us when we give them human qualities?
Ultimately, Elbow Room is a celebration of the connection between the human body and the made object.
Join us for the Opening Reception of Elbow Room on Jan.19 2018.
