English: Crossed Legs

by Belgian artist duo atelier lachaert dhanis

wood version 2002 bronze version 2014 70x40x80cm

‘Crossed legs’, a chair in bronze, lays out the mystery of the contradictory presence of the absent author. The chair is based on an archetype, so familiar as to become almost invisible, but the intervention of the artist duo entails a renewed context and a moment of active remembrance.

Two simple wooden dining chairs are attached side by side. The construction evokes the function of furniture as a stage for social interaction, allowing people to come together in familiar gathering. Through their structural language, the chairs echo the feeling of familiarity with subtly intertwined legs.

Entanglement arises as a physical as well as metaphorical concept in pieces like crossed legs, where discrete pieces of furniture are brought into meaningful spatial intersections. By using common domestic objects as visual referents, but giving them an entirely altered context, SLLD also “entangle” the viewer’s gaze, forcing them to question the assumptions they may have made on first sight, as well as provoking them to loosen their preconceptions in order to find a new understanding.

Sofie Lachaert and Luc Dhanis worked meticulously for over a thousand hours to create wooden models, then cut it in pieces to be cast in bronze, cleaned it and soldered it back together into a form that looked solid and fluid at the same time. Bronze is a traditional material with a rich history, as it was used in art for millennia.