Evening After Evening

I found these delightful mini chairs in the Boccaria market in Barcelona. The chairs reminded me of a poem called Impulse by Romanian poet Marin Sorescu (in translation by Michael Hamburger). The poem begins:

Evening after evening

I collect all the available chairs

in the neighbourhood

and read them poems.


After I returned from the market I lined up the chairs in my apartment. Over a few days I tried to analyse what it was about them that I found so intriguing.

Chairs seem to have an existential quality. Even though these chairs were mini sized models of the real thing they had character. In essence chairs are as human an artefact as possible. These little chairs seemed to represent characters in their own drama. The chairs appealed to me as a metaphor of a metaphor; each chair equating to a grid section where anything inside a section was isolated from anything outside, what was outside isolated from what was inside.

I took the chairs to the studio and I took them to the beach. Overcome by their own tsunami, I had to let them sink or swim; it was winter and the water too cold for minor heroics.

The sea soon gave back what it had taken, except for one. I didn’t let the one out of my sight and followed its journey down the coast. Just as I was giving up on it a large wave picked it up and brought it near enough for me to rescue. I called it the Survivor.