Forum 73

At first glance, Sebastian Errazuriz comes across as a witty designer, a dazzling craftsman, and a joker with a dark side. A desk lamp resurrects a discarded taxidermy duck; a floating coffin with an outboard motor offers dignified death on one’s own terms; and a cabinet guards its contents with armor of bamboo spikes. But what initially appear as buoyant “juggling acts in imagination” deliver far more solemn conclusions. All of his wide-ranging work—installation, sculpture, public art, furniture, fashion, and product design—begins with the basic idea that everything begs to be reconsidered.

We encounter familiar forms—cabinets, chairs, lamps, even a motorcycle—but something is amiss. Unexpected interventions twist meaning or reveal glaring but overlooked truths. Although the works are varied, they address a small array of weighty themes: mortality, ethics, and religion; war and violence, and political, social, and economic inequality.

Born in Chile in 1977, Errazuriz was raised in London and Santiago and has spent the last decade in New York. He studied both design and fine art, but he consistently tramples the boundaries between the two. Despite rigorous academic underpinnings, Errazuriz’s work is refreshingly accessible. It is designed to communicate, to flex the mind, and to leave viewers jostled out of comfortable complacency, questioning the status quo, and confronting the transience of life.

Look Again is the first museum exhibition to present the scope of Errazuriz’s work from the last 10 years. It was on view in the Forum Gallery and the Scaife Lobby through January 12, 2015. A special installation was on view in the Hall of Architecture through November 23, 2014.