Jessi Reaves

The large black bolster is a readymade that sits within this piece. It’s the headrest from a Percival Lafer sofa that I disassembled. I looked at it vertically and started building around it—like a column. It was structural and organizing.

This is one of the first times I was playing with the idea that recognizable elements of furniture would be trapped within these shelves/sculptures. The headrest isn’t completely obvious as its former self, but it has the kind of sexual feeling of black leather and the quality and language of upholstery we associate with modernist furniture. Those ideas informed the title. The shelf space isn’t very generous for the amount of space it takes up, and I hoped it would kind of hover in that awkward offering of functionality. –Jessi Reaves