I: Jessi Reaves

Foam Couch with Straps, 2016

Upholstery foam, fiberglass, wood, webbing, 29 x 77 x 35 inches 

Jessi Reaves is an artist based in New York City whose work is most distinct for blurring the line between design object and art. As an industrial design student, there is often talk within the department about making one’s work beautiful and dynamic and blurring that same line that Reaves manages to blur. Curiously enough, and perhaps not surprisingly, Reaves does not take the industrial design student approach and look to masters of dynamism like Brancusi or Henry Moore, but leans more toward the style of a Rauschenberg or Picasso sculpture, using more humble materials in conjunction with an inquisitiveness about what art can be. I think Foam Couch with Straps is an interesting work because it is meant to be used and interacted with which I think is a commentary on the sacredness of art on display. Reaves is inviting the viewer to enjoy the art with more than just the sense of sight. She is creating value through usability but at the same time making work that seems to be unprofessionally slapped together out of of drab materials.

The work Reaves creates is also interesting to me because there is a sense of humor in it. I enjoy the fact that her work comes off as an afterthought but has an unmistakeable beauty and dynamism to it that furniture designers agonize over. It’s also humorous to me that she uses things a furniture designer is well acquainted with but always covers up like upholstery foam and “studio dust” with the result being something that is higher than your average furniture. Not only does she elevate her work to the realm of art through less cleanliness and finish to her work but she creates something more valuable in terms of just plain cost. There is an innate charm and value to the handmade quality of her work. Reaves’s work is certainly not the product of a factory assembly line but instead a product of hard manual labor. Although perhaps not the most practical, her work is still functional and Reaves says herself that comfort is a big factor in her work. This says a lot about the artist I think in the sense that she wants her viewers to become closer to work by finding it useful and comfortable. In a short article I read on Jessi Reaves in The New Yorker, the author quotes Ludwig Wittgenstein when he says, “Meaning is use,” which I felt was very appropriate to bring up in Reaves’s case. 

Even though the work is still functional she maintains a definite stance as an artist producing art rather than a designer. She is not exactly creating a couch but more something that could be considered one. There is a sense of nostalgia to her work in the way that one may look at it and see an old shoddily built thing they saw left behind on the side of the road marking a new chapter in someones life or perhaps the last. Maybe her work is an examination of herself much like how Van Gogh painted a portrait of Gaugin and himself if they were to be described as chairs. Her work sheds light on and displays the beauty of the pieced together and unfinished quality that is inherent in all humans. 

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