Charles Gwathmey Collage

In my work, the voluptuous shapes of 20-21st century modernist furniture and design are used to explore aggression and passivity. The sculptural shapes of furniture lend themselves to plasticity, and therefore allow me to express deeper meanings to what appears at first to be fun or silly. Bright colors, populist shapes and familiar styles are enlisted to entice the viewer into a subtly underlying message of violence or victimization. I am interested in how taste in furniture can be viewed as an extension of one's personality. And how it can be used to express who an individual is (or wants to be) on a surface level, in a similar way that clothing announces who we are. The work is also about becoming trapped by possessions or material desires, and the vicious cycle of living paycheck to paycheck to afford these items. As an obsessive collector of art and objects, through my artwork I confront my own acquiring and the sometimes negative consequences of materialism. Born and raised in New York City, a sense of an overwhelming environment defines much of my work.