Heimo Zobernig
Untitled, 2017
Gold paint, plywood, steel
84 × 54 × 50 cm

Since 2004, I collect variations, or paraphrases of the famous ”The Ant” chair by Arne Jacobsen, which he designed in 1951 for a canteen of a Danish company and which was continued in 1955 in the Series 7: Tubular steel legs and a seat made from form-moulded laminated veneer.
Arne Jacobson uses a technique invented by Charles and Ray Eames through which plywood can be bent in three dimensions. To this day, these models have found countless modifications and imitations. Within its formal variations we can see prototypical figures of modern sculpture, as were introduced by Jean Arp or Henry Moore.
In my studio, the chairs are restored - if needed - preprimed and finished with a gold varnish. On the one hand the colour gold takes a stand against the dogma of material truthfulness of modernity. On the other hand it serves as a statement on monochromy.
My collection has now grown to over 50. I cut a rococo style around the edge of a few selected chairs.

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Heimo Zobernig

The work of Heimo Zobernig (b. 1958, Mauthen, Austria) spans an array of media, from architectural intervention and installation, through performance, film and video, to sculpture and painting. His practice across all these forms is connected by an interrogation of the formal language of modernism, at its most familiar in the tropes of the monochrome and the grid, yet also concerned with Constructivism, colour theory and geometric abstraction.

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