Paige Lea_The Furniture of Allan Wexler

The Furniture of Allan Wexler

Allan Wexler is an American architect and artist living in New York. He has taught art and architecture for twenty-five years and is currently teaching at Parson’s School of Design in NYC. He has had numerous national and international shows and has lectured all over the world.

Wexler’s furniture is quirky yet original. He has been known to create objects, buildings, and environments that obscure the borderline between architecture and sculpture. An exhibition in 2000 called, Custom Built, was contemporary, humorous, and surprising to its viewers. Wexler defines his project in the River Front Times…

“It's partly a hard lesson in design, inviting viewers to think again about the logic of the built environment. It's partly a lesson about human behavior, our curious habits and often wasteful ways. And last, it's a conceptual art show par excellence, the likes of which have rarely been seen since conceptualism's heyday in the 1970s.”

Some of his pieces include four shirts sewn into a tablecloth, a shellacked (alcohol-based finished) hat, designed to collect and automatically bottle rainwater, a 2-by-4 made from architectural drawing paper (not your typical wood!), and an entire sequence of dioramas dedicated to solving the problem of “dinning on a hillside.”

Although not always useful, Wexler’s furniture provokes thought and a sense of humor. They are serious studies of people and their habits, behaviors, and idiosyncrasies, as well as the products that provide them with solutions.

Most products we use—from appliances and clothing, to architecture—were designed to satisfy basic needs. These products have, over time, been altered into fashionable social practices and trends. Wexler highlights his designs by over emphasizing this fact, creating new ideas and concepts within old and tradition ones.

Images: First image is the Building for Water Collection with Buckets. 1994. Materials used: wood. The second image is Co-Exist. 2009. Materials used: wood, latex paint, and wax. The third image is titled Desk. 2009. Materials used: wood, brick, latex paint, and wax. The fourth image is Wall (I Want to Become Architecture). Materials used: Sheetrock, plywood, and pine. The fifth and last image is Four Shirts Sewn into a Tablecloth. 1991. Materials used: wood, paint, stain, shellac, hangers, shirts, and cotton.