painted metal

September 28 - November 28, 2005

Opening reception September 28, 2005 5-7pm
At 590 Madison Avenue

Robert Therrien: Table and Six Chairs is a single, monumental sculpture by Los Angeles-based artist Robert Therrien. No Title , 2003 (Table and Six Chairs) is a colossal table-and-chair set that stands almost ten-feet-high, so tall that viewers can easily walk beneath it. Therrien uses quotidian objects because he knows his viewers will be as familiar with their form and function as he is. This allows him to tap into the broad cultural resonance and narrative ambiguity of everyday forms. The experience of walking underneath the table and chairs, for example, can be at once intimate and uncanny, prompting childhood nostalgia or just physical disorientation. No Title , 2003 (Table and Six Chairs) is made after the actual wooden table-and-chair set that Therrien has at home in his own kitchen. Although it is made of painted metal, the sculpture looks like it is wood.

For Therrien, No Title , 2003 (Table and Chairs) marks a new way of exhibiting his works; the table and chairs have always been shown in gallery spaces that required the viewer to walk under the work to see it. In the expansive atrium of 590 Madison, the viewer can get an all-over look at the table and chairs from far away. This shift is subtle yet important to Therrien, for whom the act of art-making is fundamentally about looking at something from a different perspective, and enticing viewers to do the same.

Artist Bio
Therrien was born in Chicago in 1947; he now lives and works in Los Angeles. Highlights of his many solo exhibitions include self-titled exhibitions at the Gagosian Gallery, New York (2001); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2000); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (1991); and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1984).

Sponsorship
Special thanks to Edward J. Minskoff Equities.

Location
590 Madison Avenue is located between 56th and 57th Streets. The atrium is open to the public from 8am - 10pm daily.