Chair with Paws

Chair with Paws, 2022
73 x 67,5 x 52,5 cm
Aluminium

Paul Spengemann’s (*1987 Henstedt-Ulzburg, lives in Hamburg) edition began as a challenge to produce a piece of functional furniture, a table, for Hamburg gallery 14a. We have extended this commission, asking Spengemann to produce a matching chair as its counterpart. These two pieces of furniture resonate with themes of Spengemann’s artistic practice, where animals and technologies are brought repeatedly into humorous associations. For instance, in his work Flea with horse shoes (2021), he has 3d-printed fleas at 1:1 scale to add tinyly painted horseshoes on them. Like his flea, this chair was produced on a computer, drawn as a vector file, and matched to fit standard industrial sheets of aluminum. Transforming cold aluminum into animal feet, Spengemann brings the 17^th century European tradition of paw footed furnitures into a stylistic dialogue with a minimalism that is almost over sterilized.