Sculptural Benches Stretch Out Like Spaghetti
What starts with an underlying functional form in the work of artist Pablo Reinoso often gets carried away as his furniture pieces begin to take on lives of their own. The crawling tendrils and stretched figures that emerge are rendered all the more exotic by his defiant use of hard wood with soft organic forms.
This designer is perhaps most well known for his remarkable wooden spaghetti benches in which the normal ends of wood slats become the beginning of a seemingly living form that twists and turns away from the conventional shape of the bench itself – and just imagine what an outdoor version of this bench would look like against, for example, an ivy-covered brick wall.
Some of his indoor bench art installations go so far as to stretch into other rooms entirely, while others intertwine with one another or begin to curve and reshape within themselves. Some, like the Spider Bench, mimic living creatures with legs.
Beyond the benches, Reinoso has also worked on a number of chairs that likewise challenge our conception of wood as a material as well as our understanding of a traditional chair in terms of both form and function, taking classic-looking antique designs then bending and shaping them in unusual and mind-boggling ways.
Some of his chairs intersect in strange ways or morph together to become larger works of wooden art, while others have been worn by models or stretch to support themselves in strange, creative and unique ways. Like something from an animated movie, these chairs seem to come alive alone or in groups and we have the uncanny voyeuristic opportunity to witness their offbeat interactions.
“Originally a sculptor, but fundamentally an artist, Pablo Reinoso has practiced his art in various ways from an early age. He created his first sculpture at 13 and his first bench-sculpture at 15, but at the age of 6 he had already made chairs, libraries and had invented carts to hurtle down the slopes of the place called ‘France’, in Buenos Aires …”
“Pablo Reinoso works in series that he traverses, triturates, excavates, exploring different universes and materials. Like potentially all series, those of Pablo Reinoso are not closed, but always open, reflecting the permanent work in progress which is his way of thinking.”
