JANUARY

The text quoted below is from a "flyer" found in Hallwalls' archives in the UB Poetry Collection, a statement provided to Robert Longo by Scott Burton dated January 1977 about Burton's single work in this 4-man show, which is not shown in any of the slides on this web page. (In fact all available evidence would seem to indicate that these slides document Borofsky's work only, and not any of the other three artists.)


"FURNITURE INTO ART / ART INTO FURNITURE: My furniture works include installation pieces, meant only to be looked at (collections of 'found' furniture in certain arrangement), and individual pieces, meant for real use in real life rooms (for example, a series of tables which I've designed and had fabricated). The first are like pictures—the are tableaux. The second are like sculptures; they can be walked around. But they are functional objects invisible at first as 'art.' My bronze chair is halfway between the two. It is an image of a chair and it is also a chair. It was cast from a 'found' chair which I selected for, partly, being 'best-of-type' (type is cheap, mass-produced '10s, '20s, '30s Queene-Anne, this being an exceptionally well proportioned example) and for, mainly, being there in one of my rooms when I first entered. Since casting it I have heard about some historical metal furniture: Roman bronze furniture, 18th-century Russian steel furniture, 18th-century French silver furniture, Egyptian gold furniture."

~ Scott Burton, January 1977