One and No Chair, 2002-2008
timber, Serpula lacrymans, plexiglass, stainless steel, aluminium, 170 x 65 x 65 cm
mycological support: Christian Ebner, Institute of Microbiology, University of Innsbruck
The title of the work One and No Chair refers to the installation One and Three Chairs by Joseph Koshut. Koshut's work illustrates a passage from Plato's The Republic and investigates the relations between language, image and referent. The work One and No Chair, on the other hand, starts out from a cultural artefact and an informed piece of matter that is being broken down and decomposed by the mushroom Serpula lacrymans. The focus, though, is not on the idea or the information of the chair, but on the process of dematerialisation. The chair, containing within itself the possibility of not being a chair anymore, becomes a transitional object of decay. It refers to a universal logic of life and eludes the categorical orders of classic philosophy - possession, identity and ontology being subjected to a composting.
timber, Serpula lacrymans, plexiglass, stainless steel, aluminium, 170 x 65 x 65 cm
mycological support: Christian Ebner, Institute of Microbiology, University of Innsbruck
The title of the work One and No Chair refers to the installation One and Three Chairs by Joseph Koshut. Koshut's work illustrates a passage from Plato's The Republic and investigates the relations between language, image and referent. The work One and No Chair, on the other hand, starts out from a cultural artefact and an informed piece of matter that is being broken down and decomposed by the mushroom Serpula lacrymans. The focus, though, is not on the idea or the information of the chair, but on the process of dematerialisation. The chair, containing within itself the possibility of not being a chair anymore, becomes a transitional object of decay. It refers to a universal logic of life and eludes the categorical orders of classic philosophy - possession, identity and ontology being subjected to a composting.