'Fisherman' Bench

Fisherman Bench reveals itself as foreign, almost alien-like. The piece seems to have been recovered from the bottom of the ocean on a lost planet. It is generative in the sense that it accidentally opens a narrative. An object that generates fissure from which fantasy spills into reality. Informing an imaginative play and creating a scenography from a parallel fiction. Fisherman Bench is part of a limited series of unique objects that integrate the use of upcycled electroplating rods. These rods, regularly used for submerging metal items into chrome baths, pile up residue through the years which result in heavy conglomerates of copper, nickel and chrome. Byproducts of an industrial process but which remit to organic forms. This paradoxical entity which’s finish stands as the “stereotype of the artificial”(Enzo Manzini), also directly references the natural, with coral like formations. The specificity of the material’s unique pattern formations reining over the objects final appearance.In the studio we have been concerned for more than a year now in recovering these discarded rods from chrome workshops. The material is difficult to work with because it is a conglomeration of different metals which cannot weld together. The material’s limitations in a sense dictated the objects form. We could only work with the rods by creating rudimentarily joints. This made for an uneven object; a crooked chair, with a coral texture and industrial shine. A sitting piece that acts as a pseudo prop and creates narrative paths. Here is a short story about its first owner: He learned patience as a young man. Subdued to the ocean's will he would wait. An old sailor and fisherman cursed in a land-lock had taken refuge in a small service room apartment he barely ever left. He had found a kind of maternal security in his isolated castration. Increasingly he would experience senile sickness. A dizziness he welcomed, as it reminded him of his days at sea. It was only until the waves of pathological ebb and flow turned into a gale that he found himself in a hospital waiting room. He would sit and wait. Holding his cane as he once did his fishing rod. His hospital visits were only precautionary but ever more frequent, nevertheless, there was never a need to see a doctor. He would only sit and wait. Treated by the waiting room. Exercising patience until the storm passed and his mind again settled on a light-headed float.