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ART INSTALLATIONS

Chairs can be stationary or they can recline, swivel, or even roll on wheels. They can be objects of visionary design or mundane practicality. But they have at least one common trait: They are constructed to seat one person comfortably above the uncertainties of what lies below. With Katrina Chairs, on the other hand, Cuban artist Alexandre Arrechea imagines a bigger, more significant purpose: to elevate an entire community. Like many of Arrechea’s sculpture and installation works, Katrina Chairs began with a watercolor painting, A Few Days Before Katrina (Diálogo). Practical and immediate, watercolor is the artist’s primary medium. He cherishes the watercolor as the only part of his process that he shares with no other hands. His “Katrina” series includes the watercolors Levitate, Aire Húmedo, and Dialog II, each depicting the theme he realizes in Katrina Chairs. The titles refer to the hurricane in 2005 that slammed the U.S. Gulf Coast with winds of up to 127 miles per hour. Its flooding caused the breaching of some levees in New Orleans, leaving parts of the city under water and uninhabitable. In 2008, when the city introduced Prospect.1, a biennial contemporary art exhibition, Arrechea was among the 81 artists selected to participate. His installation, Mississippi Bucket, was a large-scale pale mimicking the shape of the Mississippi River and constructed with driftwood salvaged from it waters after the storm..