At the cornerstone of Plato’s theory of forms - where the essence of a thing is what we know, and that essence is its form - we find the humble chair. We don’t need all chairs to look the same to know they fit into the category of items we refer to as a “chair”, which we understand as a stool to sit on. The essence of something is also its purpose. So when an exhibition takes up the chair and negates its chairness, is it still a chair?
In a lineage of artists arguably beginning with ‘Le Fauteuil’ 1860 by Edgar Degas; we can fast forward via Joseph Kosuth’s ‘One and Three Chairs’ 1965 and arrive at Hongxi Li’s object that we might also consider being a chair; though it has failed in its essential duty of providing a place to sit. Like a throne for a lonely leader, the chair takes a central position in the room. Li has directly responded to the local area by mimicking the standard slot chair with a stool base found at the nearby Silvertime Casino with one slight change: the support base has been replaced with a spring. This destabilising mechanism makes it impossible to stay seated.
Strangely, the chair looks as if it has every intention of fulfilling its promise. The cushioned seat is sourced from a London casino, and the rest is handcrafted to appear as if it’s come fresh off the factory production line. No easy feat. The spring was hand sprung in stainless steel, and to prop up the heavy steel, it was essential to source a vintage base, which was then manually polished over several months. Flanked left and right are wall-mounted gambling tickets. They result from Li’s short dalliance with gambling from an investment of £10 each and a single pull of the lever. Only one of the six tickets shows a profit; the amount is paltry.
In this installation, which precipitates a collection of reconfigured chairs to be shown at V.O Curations in Angel later this year, the gallery is stripped bare of the familiar trappings of a casino. Instead, the bright daylight, white walls, black chair and steel starkly reveal the apparatus of the gambling room. At the same time, the street window provides an easy escape. Guest curators, DATEAGLE ART, described how they’d greet visitors who knew the local Silvertime perhaps too well, listening to their stories of addiction and debt. Of course, for an art exhibition to engage with the public is always expansive, but to engage with the people in a gallery situated far from the glamour of central London, enhances the genuine substance of the work.
‘Dream Rich’ accentuates the richness of dreaming, inspiring the great aspiration to become wealthy. Bereft of corporate bling, it is difficult to understand the enticement to hand over well-earned cash to an industry which generates a gross gambling yield upwards of £14billion per annum in the United Kingdom. Furthermore, Li has created an installation of significant contemporary, philosophical weight. Spotlighting the chair, named as such from Greek, French and Latin associations with royalty and religion, she opens up contemplation between how global, political, and social frameworks interact with the mind-body paradox of the individual.
