A conversation between Richard Artschwager and Brooke Alexander for Richard Artschwager: Complete Multiples, Brooke Alexander Editions, New York, January 25 – March 9, 1991:
BROOK ALEXANDER: After the Glass Drop you went into the drawers (Untitled) which is also a kind of set.
RICHARD ARTSCHWAGER: Right. The drawers really grew out of the other box (Locations) – it was another kind of “kit.”
BA: Basically, it was the materials that you were using at the time.
RA: It was a collection of my stories, some of them anyways. It was the box itself which was made of oak, and then the top which was coated with formica – a picture of oak, only it was washed out – very white. Then the first drawer contains another picture (formica) of that oak which is in turn a picture of the top of the box. The second drawer contains nothing, only air – it has no bottom.
BA: A metaphor for the void – or for the uselessness of the box?
RA: The void perhaps, but I never could connect with that kind of take on uselessness. It opens the door to a kind of social satire that I have a hard time with, that I actually find offensive. I made furniture for too many years to sneer at either the useful or the useless. The useful is an ingredient or device that you can use in art – or not use – certain kinds of paint, imagery, paint as paint, lights and darks, complementaries, figure-ground ambiguity – just stuff that you can use. It could be a reference to the useful, depiction of the useful or actual insertion of the useful.
The third drawer contains glass. It may look like the second drawer, but try to put your hand through it. There’s no bottom, it’s just not visible. The fourth contains a mirror….
BA: Ah – I see something else building here: the first drawer is a true mirror of the top, the third drawer is a false mirror of the second, and the fourth drawer is a true (or is it a false) mirror of the operator of the box – you’re looking for something and you find yourself. Am I going off on some wild tangent?
RA: I’m not sure. The box lends itself to that kind of storytelling – at least you’re having fun with it. The fifth drawer uses the rubberized hair again as the miscellaneous which is supposed to be anything and everything. The miscellaneous comes to an end.
