Together As One

I was drinking my coffee the other night at a café, and before I knew it I was caught in my usual daydream. I began to stare out into an empty space, with my thoughts off to somewhere, until my eyes fixed on a plain, empty chair. I gazed at it, and for the moment, I just couldn’t explain to myself why I found that chair to be so fascinating, yet unreal. My mind started to become one with that chair, and all of sudden I was thinking, “I MUST make something out of that chair before I go any more insane.”

Now that I think back to that time, when I was imagining myself as a chair, I guess the phrase “I think therefore I am” suited my situation the best. I brought that chair to my home, searched for its exact definition, and took a photo of it; when I finished the process and put all three results together(including the real chair), I began to notice that each one of those results represented the object “chair” in its own way: the definition as a form of text, photo as an image, and actual object as reality. However, at the same time, each one of those results related itself to another, the three different descriptions of the chair each represented a whole. Cycling... (Quote Foucault here?...) Each one reflects upon another, and together they represent what "chair" really is. Of course, most people know a chair when they see one, but since the object is so common, people don't really wonder what the object actually represents. In my piece One and Three Chairs, if I just took out one of the elements, the representational meaning of the object "chair" would have become pointless and much weaker; yet as a whole, the three elements stand as a strong representation that explains what "chair" really is.

-Kosuth