Bernhard Hegglin
/ Tina Braegger
Domingo, 2014
Ink jet Print on Canvas, Aluminum, Wood
200 x 70 x 40 cm
Like many collaborative works Domingo is an amalgam of personalities and positions. Its form is born of the idea of relaxation and leisure, even as the slightly creepy Grateful Dead logo of a bear lends absurdity to the already comic impression of a chair notoriously difficult to fold and unfold. Here in the capital of leisure, art and merchandise come together – you can look but you can’t relax.
‘Domingo’ is a collaboration between Bernhard Hegglin and me. What we were trying to do, is to generate an object, where one could find both our work, or personalities, united, as a little homage to the times we shared a studio. It was when I was working on a series of paintings, with the logo of ‘The Grateful Dead’, printed on them. Bernhard's typical pose during that time, was to lie around in one of those aluminum deck chairs. It began with a joke: We stapled the left over bears, that took away space in our studio, onto the empty frame of the deck chair, after the original lining was broken, because of wastage. Soon we realized, that there was a certain charm to the object we had generated. We started to think about the deck chair a little more.
A deck chair is often associated with leisure time and relaxation. The specific aluminum frame we use for our model is not the typical wooden framed deck chair, one would find next to a pool side, a beach, or on an ocean cruiser- it is more close to a camp bed. As every deck chair, it is transportable and stackable, although notoriously difficult to fold and unfold. That is where its natural sense for comedy finds its spot in the object.
The combination with the 'Grateful Dead' logo bear, (a happily smiling, yet slightly creepy image of a marching bear), turns the object into something a little absurd, for there is a certain possibility for an analogy to a merchandise item.
With its new, rather stiff lining, one can obviously not sit in the deck chair. We wanted to re-contextualize the deck chair and transform it into a work of art. Putting the specific object, (a singular piece and not a serial production) on a pedestal, underlines the fact, that it is an art work, namely a sculpture.
