NICE CONDO
|
Interview by Sara Graham. |
SG: Talk a little bit about your education and background in design. We didn’t know eachother then… CH: Not directly, it did when I was in grad school when I made a dry erase board in the form of a shipping pallet—using a CNC machine I drew a Persian rug pattern on it with dry erase markers, performatively erasing it for documentation. But now I’ve returned to the more craft elements of my education, things are not about being super clever anymore. SG: When you curate JONALDUDD, it seems like there’s a cleverness, a wink and a sense of humor or levity around Design Week. Where does that come from and why is that still important to you? |
JONALDDUDD, 2018
CH: The design world is a very moneyed luxury space, it’s ultra-commodified, which in a sense I appreciate, because unlike the art world, it’s okay to at least talk about the money. But I think most of the people participating in JONALDDUDD are on the ground level. They are people that are younger, just coming out of school and they have an interest in making their own work. It’s really creative and a bit working class. People are making weird narrative chairs because they are inspired to see it in the world. They're not like, “how can I dial up my portfolio of renderings so I can get a job at Knoll designing office chairs.” CH: It’s fine for some people’s aesthetic. For mine, it compromises the profiles and lines.
|
CH: I wouldn't call it good design but I think it is underappreciated in it’s efforts to work within parameters and solve problems in a practical way. And it is almost in and of itself not a design effort, but on repeat applied to so many different interiors, I think it's worth looking at how those problems have been solved and why they've been solved that way. It's linoleum, wood paneling, painted cinder block, sturdy but banal furniture and no-nonsense graphics. You can go to a DMV [Department of Motor Vehicles] but that form of municipal design alone isn't interesting. When it’s juxtaposed with what the space was intended to be, you see the system at work. It's actually when capitalism is so naked and evident—you see the country’s slide away from its proto-European roots, driven down into a naked and harsh survivalist capitalism reality of today. That tension between those two intentions is America. It's Franklin D. Roosevelt eroding into George W. Bush. It’s been pretty sad and Lord of the Flies since then. |
||
Bench repair at New York City Marriage Bureau |
But to answer your other question, the design movement [in America that I can do without] has got to be that 1890s Industrial Revolution aesthetic. I never went to Europe and saw an Edison bulb hanging in a bar.
|
||
Nice Condo, Belmont Dining Table, 2023 |
||
|
||
We walk around the world and so many things feel hidden and unknowable, but when you see a bolt that holds two things together you KNOW what's happening, you understand the forces at play and I find that very comforting. It’s exactly what it's telling you what it is, which is unfortunately kind of rare. Obfuscation is the norm. It’s also probably an expression of my personality. I'm straightforward. Maybe to a fault. |