Showcasing pieces made between 2017 and 2021, a flick through A Thing on a Table in a House transports you directly into Serban Ionescu’s anthropomorphic world, one that straddles the ever-fine line separating furniture and sculpture.
This publication is in itself a Ionescu sculpture, its oversized board-book format printed and precisely die-cut to mimic the rambling contours and dazzling colors found on the steel sculptures of this prolific New York-based, Romanian-born artist. It also doubles as a play, penned in three acts by Ionescu’s fellow artist and close friend James English Leary, who fully embraces Ionescu’s artistic approach and explores his ideas in a highly absurd series of events that feature an all-star cast of bizarre characters: Happy Lattice, Dog Bench Loaf, and Assembled Chair, to name a few. If one were to classify these pieces as furniture, then you’d be looking at pieces that have been overrun by some sort of menacing, playful poltergeist. Possessed, they are halfway gone on their transformation into something entirely unclassifiable.
Publisher: Apartamento
Release date: July 2021
Format: Hardcover
Dimensions: 9 x 11”
Pages: 68 pages
ISBN: 978-84-09-31091-3