“Why not dance with a chair?” Brendan Fernandes asks.
Why not, indeed. Chairs — part art, part practical function — will be used in performances at a new exhibition at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation.
Fernandes will choreograph movement in connection with the exhibit which opens Sept. 6.
“We’re challenging what a dance is or can be,” he says.
The artwork by Scott Burton will stay in one place though, considering that some pieces are made of dense granite or formed of metal. One has aluminum triangle arms so sharp they look like they could pierce an elephant.
Burton, an artist who died in 1989, was interested in public art that also had a function. Thus, settees carved from boulders and chairs made of bronze or aluminum, connected without traditional nails or pegs. Some pieces of his are definitely used. Outside the Equitable Building in New York still sit granite tables and stools where workers sit for lunch. And “Rock Settee” resides permanently outdoors at the Pulitzer.
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Some users may be aware the furniture is also art, but others are not, says Jess Wilcox, who curated “Shape Shift.”
It’s part of the “multilayered nature” of Burton’s work, she says. “You can appreciate it from many perspectives.”
She also finds that sitting on some of the pieces is surprisingly comfortable. Wilcox, who lives in upstate New York, is an independent curator who approached the Pulitzer with the idea for a Scott Burton show. The museum calls it the largest solo exhibition of the artist’s work in the U.S.
Wilcox was in town in late August to help install the exhibition, which required careful planning and handling of heavy pieces. Cardboard stand-ins for some sculptures were placed in the museum, helping her decide how to angle pieces and envision sightlines.
A person sitting directly in front of a visitor provides a different feel than, say, sitting at a three-quarters angle. (Museum visitors will be able to sit on three of the sculptures.)
“It’s following the artists’ footsteps, in a way,” she says.
Photos, drawings and writings from Burton’s archives show that he used to make models and then did cardboard mock-ups of work. Many of these archives, borrowed from the Museum of Modern Art, will also be on display at the Pulitzer.
Working with large boulders required precise planning. You have to place them carefully, Wilcox says. And for the artist: “Once you cut granite, you can’t say, ‘Oh, I want it 2 inches higher.’”
She describes each rock settee Burton made as having its own character. For the one owned by the Pulitzer, Burton’s studio workers called the boulder “the whale.”
“He named all of his furniture pieces.”
They can be formal, geometric, but also abstract, she says. Burton called them “sculpture in love with furniture.”
A gay man who lived during the Stonewall uprising, Burton included some queer symbolism in his work.
Some sculptures are two pieces essentially held together by gravity and can be symbols of unity and mutual support, Wilcox says.
“Usually together they make something that can support the body.” A chaise might invite a viewer to want to lie down and mold the body into a pose.
Poses and body language from the 1970s and ‘80s gay cruising culture will be part of the performances directed by Fernandes. He is hiring a few dancers from Ƶ and outfitting them in jeans and white T-shirts, a cruising uniform during Burton’s time, Fernandes says.
The performances “In Two” will be “built on a number of prompts and gestures,” with some improvisation expected, he says.
“The work isn’t really defined he says,” likening it to the fact that “queer beings are also many different things.”
When Fernandes danced professionally, he went from ballet to this hybrid kind of movement with art, performing at museums like the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art.
Fernandes, who identifies as queer, moved with his family from Kenya in 1989 when he was 10. (Ironically, Scott Burton died on his birthday that year. Burton died of AIDS-related illness.)
The dancer has lived in Canada and the United States and is now based in Chicago. He also builds furniture and objects and has used them in performance, pointing to a swing for “Call and Response” on his .
Of the performances, he says that viewers a generation or more younger than Burton may see things differently, but they will “also be able find a sense of heritage.”
Wilcox says that although Burton’s sexual identity definitely influenced his work, the link to the art may not be obvious.
A small room in the exhibition will show Burton’s interest in sculpture by Constantin Brâncuşi, with two pieces by the Romanian, Mademoiselle Pogany III (1933) and Sleeping Muse (1926). The room will include four table and pedestal forms by Burton.
Burton was the first to participate with MOMA in an artist-curated exhibition of that museum’s work. Burton, who once wrote an essay on the relationship between sculpture and its base, chose some Brâncuşi works, and included in the exhibit a base alone — controversial at the time.
Wilcox says that Burton liked that some references “might fly under the radar, but he made work that reached people on multiple levels.”
Following Ƶ, in fall 2025, “Scott Burton: Shape Shift” will open in Chicago at Wrightwood 659, a private exhibition space.