Denver Art Museum: Have a Seat: Mexican Chair Design Today Exhibit

You know how they have signs in art museums saying don’t sit on the chairs because they’re part of the exhibition, not for resting? And you feel that the sign is provoking you cause you’ve been standing for so long looking at art. Well, this time around, you can sit.

At the Have a Seat exhibit, the artists encourage viewers to sit in their handcrafted seats; now, if you can fit in them, it is a different story. Spread out in a spacious gallery, you find yourself walking from chair to chair testing them out as if you’re going to actually buy one of them.

It seemed more like a Goldilocks conundrum where you were looking for the most comfortable seat to sit on. Some were organic, like a drum-style chair made of lava rocks (Tambor Lava by Habitacion 116) or a folding stool made of pure wood and leather (Milo Chair by Javier Reynaga). One was made out of recycled or reused materials with the sag of a bean chair (Fidencio Sillon by Andres Lhima).

When it comes to chair design, Mexico has five styles that were reinvented: the Acapulco chair, which has a rounded frame with bungee-like cords crisscrossing through the bottom; the butaque, which is an X-frame chair; a icpalli, which is a high backed chair with a rounded bottom; and the Spanish side chairs that originated from Spain.

There were also three projection screens of four-minute films of how chairs are used and made in parts of Mexico City and the surrounding region. Scenes of serene parks with cement benches and plastic stools underneath a ceiling of tarps covering a flea market.

The furniture designers are artists who have a permanent display at the art museum whose philosophies are to meld the history of Mexico with modern art. Towards the end of the gallery, you can see the idea is more profound, with a section of wicker seating designed to look like the feathered serpent, Quetzalcoatl.

You’ll get an eGuide and links to the designer’s websites when visiting the DAM website.