Artist:
Sam Durant (born 1961 in Seattle, USA; lives and works in Los Angeles, USA).

Materials:
C-print; each print 41 x 51 cm.

Description:
“The artist posed classic mid-century modern chairs in compromising positions. Documented with their feet in the air in such a way that any appraisal of their best features, [such as] sinuous lines and elegant proportions was denied. [The] positions also invited crass anthropomorphic readings, as if the chairs were primed for humiliation. This punk gesture, where the usually carefully art-directed chairs are theatrically flipped-over and photographed in an artless, snapshot style, suggests a changing of the guard, a dethronement, or comeuppance at the hands of unappreciative philistines. The chair photographs hint at the simmering class conflict that turns up in much subsequent work and has become an important problem for the artist.”
—Michael Darling, “Sam Durant’s Riddling Zones,” in Sam Durant, ed. Michael Darling (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2002), 13-4.