Is it a Chair? No. 9 Sculpture

Space memories: iChair Project To think of all the possibilities offered by an object. To think of all the possibilities offered by a body. To delve into the symbiosis between the two and create a new element, capable not only of bringing together and discovering the memory acquired during the evolving dialogue, but also of revealing a new object/subject that is the bearer of all, past and present, meanings. Within these parameters, Raffael & Tai Lomas establish a new relational chain between different disciplines -culture, photography, dance- with the aim of making visible the footprint that a body leaves in space. The project is built under a new influence under which science, technology and art merge and allow to inhabit a unique and innovative space from which to consider the force that a body, organic or inorganic, deploys in space. The result is the sum of memories deriving from the creative force of the gesture; a gesture that originates in the dialogue between the different languages that articulate I Chair Project. The creative process of this series demonstrates that the communion of the different disciplines opens up the possibility of observing the world under new parameters. The particularity of iChair Project lies in the importance of the dialogue between object and subject, offering a new image, the result of the memory of the movement of the body in space. In the process of execution, Tai Lomas experiences the act of observing the world under new parameters. If at first his objective was to photograph the chairs made by the sculptor Raffael Lomas, in a second stage, he discovers that he himself needs to generate movement around the chair, inhabit it in some way. This is how he begins to generate different perspectives of the sculptures, objects which are, in turn, bearers of a personal memory. Tai Lomas observes the different angles of the created image, but the image must also offer that trace of the body that has interacted with the object. This is how a dialogue with dancers is established in the third stage of the project. The photographer takes the place of a spectator who tracks the movement of the dancer around the object with his camera. A kind of dance conceived as a conversation between sculpture and dance. But, like sculpture, photography creates images that are still, devoid of movement. It is here that, trying not to betray the action itself, Raffael & Tai Lomas embark on a new journey of investigation, attempting to rescue the trail of the movement in space. Making use of technology, introducing 3D cameras that allow to capture the trace of the movement of a body in space. This is how he offers us a final perspective that appeals to that sum of the memories, processes and movements. A conjunction of subjects and objects, present and absent, the new image is writing: the imprint of the body in space. To speak of Lomas' work is to venture into an open galaxy, a kind of cosmogony created in a process that was carried out in a progressive and intuitive manner, responding to the necessities of the very nature of the project. His gaze, awake and questioning, endows the new image generated by the camera with a double nature: that of both object and subject. A living yet immobile memory of what happened; a stillness that responds to movement. In this sum of opposites, the dialogue provides a constant challenge and enriches the parts as each one of them, with its own idiosyncrasy, offers itself up without conditions to a new interlocutor. After spending two months living in an intimate relationship with the Mal Pelo dance company, John Berger wrote them a letter upon returning home. In it, he suggested that they dance again, based on the memory he described in his letter. This gesture marked the beginning of a correspondence that plays with multiple languages -corporal, verbal- in which those memories, deposited inside us by the presences, are assumed. Each gesture becomes a standard for a writing of memory; a shared, relational memory. Something similar happens in the work of Raffael & Tai Lomas: their gaze is immersed in a shared, common universe. A space full of presences and absences. A communion of times and spaces assembled in the image created in the Workflow series. An image that is presence, writing; but like all writing, alludes to endless memories, actions and meanings that go beyond the visible. The new image arises from the identity of the subject/body in space so as to reflect on the imprint it leaves after occupying and inhabiting it. The whole that originates in a constant dialogue between opposites: visible/invisible, presence/absence, subject/object, mobile/immobile. A dialogue that allows us to arrive to a reflection that leads directly towards one of the great challenges of the contemporary world: to conceive the universe, appealing to its holistic nature, so as to establish new codes for thinking about the human being and the footprint we leave in the contemporary world. The created image turns into writing. A writing/image that inhabits space and, in turn, is a challenge to create a new writing/movement based on the dialogue with space. The resulting 3D image reveals the relational chain so as to manifest that physical absence and that presence, symbols of everything that is no longer there. To somehow return to the origin; not only of the gesture but of that first, invisible presence that surrounds all objects. Turning that trace into writing. Restoring that power of communication to the body, appealing to the zero degree of writing. A writing which can be reproduced with technology, and which offers us the possibility of returning to a new, originally nucleus. A nucleus which, once again, presents a double nature: a new visible object and old invisible subjects. Memories fused in a conjunction of presences and absences that return to inhabit the space. The sum of languages, disciplines, origins, memories and presences becomes a metaphor for our contemporaneity, presenting the trace as a parable of the history of humanity. Imma Prieto Carrillo 2018, Barcelona All the Chair Sculptures are part of the iChair Project and done with a unique artistic method of working only with the materials of the original Chair. This project is a collaboration between Raffael Lomas an Israeli Sculptor and a TED Fellow an his son, the photographer Tai Lomas, who is based in Barcelona It began as an attempt to use photography to ravel hidden layers of the sculptural language and developed to translating movement into objects. Photographs and Videos of Sketching of Dance and 3Dprinting of movement You may find at Works of this series are in the TLV Museum , Arturo Schwarz Collection (Milan) Galila Brazilia Hollander Collection (Brussels)