Imagine you could open these drawers. Think about the physical aspects of opening them: the act of l

Imagine you could open these drawers. Think about the physical aspects of opening them: the act of lifting or grabbing the handle, the amount of force needed to pull it, the feeling of sliding the drawer open. What might be inside each of these drawers? Would they contain similar items or wildly different ones? The entirety of this assemblage is a little taller than a bike, and roughly the same width. Does this size change the way you might engage with the drawers?This work, titled Chest of Drawers, “You Can’t Lay Down Your Memories,” edition number 45, was designed by Dutch artist Tejo Remy and made by Droog Designs, an informal collective of Dutch designers. There are many iterations of this work, each configured slightly differently and with different drawers held together by an industrial strap or belt. Here twenty drawers of various sizes, shapes, colors, and materials are stacked on top of each other and abutting each other at angles. They don’t fit together neatly and there are open spaces between drawers. Each individual drawer was taken from a piece of existing furniture and slotted inside newly constructed wooden boxes; like many quilts, each drawer had a previous “life” before coming together in this piece. Remy himself is interested in memory and sees this work as a metaphor for the “memory system.” In many ways, the work offers the viewer more questions than it does answers. What might the relationship be between the phrase in the title (“You Can’t Lay Down Your Memories”) and the artwork itself? What does the size of this work suggest about memory? Does the use of drawers suggest easy access to memories or does it control access to them? Share your reflections on the role of memory in art with art, and compare Remy’s work to other works about memory in our collection.Posted by Christina MarinelliTejo Remy (Dutch, born 1960). Chest of Drawers, “You Can’t Lay Down Your Memories,” edition number 45, designed 1991; made 2005. Maple, other woods, painted and unpainted metals, plastic, paper, textile. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Joseph F. McCrindle in memory of J. Fuller Feder, by exchange, 2005.36. Creative Commons-BY -- source link

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