Jeremy Croft has a knack for capturing textures of various materials using paint. He’s put that talent to good use in his new solo exhibition dubbed Lazy Boy, in which he uses acrylic and oil paint to depict mid-century chairs. The exhibition opens at Hed Hi Studio with a reception from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Oct. 14.
The paintings are at once about and not about chairs: The bold use of negative space surrounding the empty furniture in Croft’s paintings introduces questions about presence, absence and existence.
North-Charleston based artist Croft is self-taught. Born and raised in Williston, S.C., for many years, his artistic abilities were applied to trade-oriented jobs including carpentry and metal fabrication. These past experiences have served him well in his work as an artist thanks to his attention to detail and his deep appreciation and awareness of texture and material.
“Being around carpentry, sheet metal, wood and all these materials, you get a really good look at them,” Croft said. “When I’m painting metal, I have so many years, days, hours with this material in real life. I have this appreciation for all these little fasteners and things that hold the stuff together. That gave me this familiarity that I can bring to the recreating of them in paint.”
In Lazy Boy, Croft’s attention to detail — especially in how light clings to forms in metal, velour, acrylic and other materials — creates a miraculous modeling of furniture which feels both realistic and playfully painted at once. There are moments where a chair’s edge is decidedly blurry, or Croft decides to include a small rip in the chair’s fabric.
Croft is also skillful in his description of physical weight: A blue blown-up chair feels airy and bouncy next to a wooden chair designed by Rolf Sachs.
Objects as subjects
He started this body of work in April, initially inspired by a book on mid-century furniture design he found at the library.
“I’m open to being inspired by anything,” he said. “I saw this swan chair and something about it was like, ‘I’ve got to paint this.’ I loved the textures — the old leather and then this beautiful aluminum pedestal that it was on. And the outline, the form, it sucked me in.”
Upon further research, he found the chairs to be conceptually interesting because these mid-century furniture designers valued form more than function.
“I understood this furniture as going beyond what the utility of a chair is, because they don’t look necessarily comfortable. And after researching the period that these came out of, it seems like they are more an existential response than something to sit on,” Croft said.
The-art-object-as-furniture is in direct comparison to the reference material of the exhibition’s title: The undeniably American concept of the La-Z-Boy recliner chair, which allows its sitter to lay back ultra-comfortably, watching hours of television, with some even providing cupholders and a special spot for the remote.
“The Lazy Boy title is a counterpoint to these chairs,” Croft said. “That’s the chair that I know. I’ve never seen any of these chairs in person. I don’t have any history with these chairs, but a La-Z-Boy, I do. To pit these two against each other. That’s the part that’s up for interpretation.”
Though Lazy Boy is a series without any figures, the viewer may find themselves wondering, who does this chair belong to? When was the last time it was sat in? And what kind of clues do the backgrounds provide about where they might exist?
Setting mood through color
In Lounger No. 313, a white backyard lounge chair is set against a cool, deep green background — perhaps it’s near a pool, or maybe a grassy backyard — but all that Croft needs the viewer to know is that it’s somewhere cool, lush, zen, as he implies with his flat use of a pine green shade.
The colorful voids behind the chairs are in stark contrast to Croft’s meticulous handling of detail on the furniture. He said he hopes the painting’s void will pull the viewer in, further emphasized by the chair’s position on the canvas, offset from the center, even going off the edge of the surface in some cases.
“Moving the subject out of the center and into the periphery, it changes what the painting indicates,” he said. And in terms of color choice, for Croft, it all comes down to mood.
“The chairs and the period that they came from were very colorful. So I wanted to put them back into a colorful world, to put them in that context. And I was trying to use big, polarizing colors. I try to pick what color goes with the chair on a mood basis,” he said.
And in these moody, mythic proportions, the paintings become more about physical presence and interaction with the viewer than they ever were about chairs.
“When I’m thinking about people living with them, I want them to have an impact. When you’re around them in the evening, and the sun is setting, it gets this glow. … It will almost turn the whole room into that color and really make its presence known.”
View the work in person at Hed Hi Studio from 6p.m. to 10 p.m. Oct. 14 or by appointment until Oct. 21. Check out jeremycroft.net or hedhistudio.com to learn more.
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