The versatile chair cover + Nikita Bukoros
2023
The interaction with furniture and architectural space, namely the creation of "a versatile chair cover", became a new focus for the artist and designer Yasya Khomenko.
For her first compressed chair cover, which was made in April 2023, Yasia applied the principle of unification to create a versatile object that would be able to combine, in this case, completely random chairs into one visual subject group. Using her traditional compression technology, which is dominated by its sculptural texture, the artist deliberately hid under it those flaws that could distract attention from the form of the object - various defects, replaced or broken parts, kitschy design.. Thus, the cover, created according to the maximum measurements of the chairs existing on the market, turns each object into a piece of art, in fact transforming it from an interior object into a frame for a new shape. Because the chair as such is no longer important, it only serves as a stretcher for the canvas.
In August 2023, as part of a special international scholarship at the SKD Museum, Yasia Khomenko cooperated with product designer Nikita Bukoros to expand technological research, as the facilities and support of the Japanese Palace (SKD Museum) were ideal for physical experiments. This circumstance greatly influenced the result, as the corresponding production is a very painful issue for a temporarily displaced artist. Through this collaboration, they have explored a variety of shrinkable materials that enable the immediate formation of shapes directly onto objects. Their final work was a live performance of direct compression of a hypertrophied enlarged cover on a chair under the influence of temperature. Thus, the demonstration of the process became equally important as the final object. Nikita also created a video visualization of the adaptation of the thermally compressed cover on various types and designs of chairs, including spliced mutants of folk crafts that have become an integral part of DIY upcycling. So in this way, the versatile chair cover also becomes an object of sustainability, since the chair frame can even be made from garbage. This new chair uniform equates the most expensive chair with the most trashy equivalent, proclaiming a system of equality and vanishing social and economic classes.
