CHAIRS
Both utilitarian and decorative “installations” of recycled cheap materials and DIY chairs, tables, or ashtrays are presented with all the dignity of original design creations and testaments of the “irrepressible desire to make the inhospitable working environment inhabitable”, often resemblant of a life in the apocalyptic future of our universe.
CHAIRS
Folk creativity and amateur art. Documenting the aesthetics of workforce backroom social spaces is one part of the Industria project. In these photographs I focused on how workers make their inhospitable settings homely. They create places to rest, to snack, to smoke or to take a nap, to make up for too-early rising. Cut-out pictures from magazines stuck all over lockers and tables. Makeshift, cobbled together furniture odds and ends. They took whatever they could find nearby and made new original designs out of that scarcity, all the more beautiful for it. The project includes a collection of chairs that I acquired for the Collection of Applied Art and Design at the Moravian Gallery in Brno, where it is deposited side-by-side with the world’s cheapest designers. This inspired the CHAIRS book, in a limited bibliophile edition of six copies, for which the same workers designed steel book bindings, in the same industrial spirit.