Martí Cormand

FORMALIZING THEIR CONCEPT: JOSEPH KOSUTH’S “ONE AND THREE CHAIRS”, 1965

2013
graphite on paper and oil on paper (tape)
14 x 46 1/2 inches

In his recent work, Spanish-born artist Marti Cormand has been making meticulous drawings of black-and-white, documentary photographs of well-known works of art. Here, Cormand riffs on Joseph Kosuth’s emblematic Conceptual art piece, One and Three Chairs, by making a graphite drawing of three photos of the work. Kosuth’s piece features three ways to consider the definition and understanding of a chair – real object, photograph, and text definition – and Cormand’s work present’s three photographic documents of the work, transformed and complicated through his photorealistic graphite drawings and trompe l’oeil painted tape. Cormand’s work has been exhibited at venues such as Portland Museum of Art; Arranz-Bravo Foundation, Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona; Aldrich 2007 Emerging Artist Award Exhibition, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield; and Villa Arson, Nice. His work is included in several collections such as The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Fundacio La Caixa, Barcelona; and Fundacio Villa, Barcelona.