Description

Ruud Kuijer's pairing of his own work alongside Gerrit Rietveld's highlights the sculptural quality of the Dutch designer's iconic chairs

For this conceptual project, Dutch sculptor Ruud Kuijer (born 1959) curated 11 combinations of his own work alongside chairs by Gerrit Rietveld (1888-1964). The focus is not on Rietveld as a designer, architect or De Stijl icon, but rather on the production process of chairs as compared to sculptures. Particularly, Rietveld's early and lesser-known works reveal a process rooted in the inherent properties of the materials used. In this approach Rietveld and Kuijer meet. Kuijer extensively studied the world's largest collection of Rietveld furniture at the Centraal Museum Utrecht, choosing from over 300 Rietveld items and from more than 480 sculptures from his own oeuvre. Each pairing highlights a specific, formal sculptural quality of a Rietveld chair. Together, Kuijer and curator William Tucker meticulously reviewed the selection of chairs and sculptures for this unique publication on the sculptural Rietveld.