Double Storey
Ilan Sandler
May 7 – September 15, 2003
Ilan Sandler, Double Storey, 2003; 18' x 10' x 13'; stainless steel, nylon
Artist Statement
I imagine myself standing while I watch the lawn chair sitting in the Toronto Sculpture Garden. This chair is a small architectural structure that suggests the prospect of leisure among the city's tall buildings: one can walk through it, or around it, or pause to sit under it. Without its conventional functional role as a seat, the piece lets passersby slow down and contemplate repose. Although providing no shelter or elevated platform, sections of the chair function by framing views of the city park: the triangular archways created by the legs are both the support that elevates the chair and a minimalist superstructure through which viewers can project their thoughts into the garden.
Double Storey is a playful sculptural object that has shed its utilitarian function to become a gateway wherein a state of meditative leisure intersects with the object's dynamic structure and its unexpectedly oversized grand scale. One cannot sit back in this chair and lay claim to the public park, but must stand around or under it to imagine the view from the top. A sense of delicacy in the object's structure and in people's movements around it is reflected in the nylon cables that subtly delineate the planes of the chair's seat and backrest.
The transience of people moving through the park is echoed by the chair's own collapsibility: at the end of the exhibition period it will be folded up and transported away as so many other lawn chairs across the country are stored away with the change in season. The view of the sky framed by the seat is as temporary a window as the pause in urban life that allows for rest and contemplation.
