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Overlapped & Dysfunctional
Contemporary Furniture Series
The old electric fan rotates slowly, and the fragrance of Ceylon tea fills the little tea room. The white porcelain English teacups drift lightly on the table, with clear water filling the hollowed rosewood table, but making no waves. Beside the wooden table with water filled to the top is a chair that a combination of a Ming dynasty style rosewood chair and British colonial rattan chair. It is an obscure combination, making it difficult to discern whether it is an intrusive invasion or mutual fusion, like a customized version of the legendary conjoined twins of the 19th century, Chang and En.
The word “chair” cannot be found in Thailand’s ancient language. The Thai people in ancient times sat on the floor. Chairs were non-existent then because they did not serve any practical purpose in the Thai people’s daily lives. The demand for function leads to the production of tools and objects. The coining of new words establishes the object’s form, and its practical use which is rooted in daily experience. Humanistic fields in different times and spaces have derived multiple styles of the same object, [and functionality is what defines the name of the object.] Therefore, if a table has the look of a table but does not have the function of a table, unable to contain anything on its top, is it still a table? Will this become another classic chicken and egg paradox? The non-existent “chair” in ancient Thai language also indirectly transcends the “chair” described in Joseph Kosuth's classic three-definition rhetoric, as well as its related image interpretation and annotated function of a chair, leaving this important exposition of contemporary conceptual art in a specific form of cultural dialectic and the coding framework within civilization.
Words cannot delineate delicate emotions that can only be understood intuitively. Ambiguity is an endless dizzy spiral. Contemporary furniture design, driven by a consideration of how to abandon its functionality, is no longer the extension of pure ergonomic design, but is more of a deep intervention of the humanistic field and the reconfiguration of a philosophical interface. By experiencing the abandonment of an object’s functionality, we are led into a contemporary detailed perceptual awareness.
