Christopher Kurtz, Linenfold Blond Drinks Cabinet, 2022 | Cabinet

Christopher Kurtz’s pieces are born, first and foremost, from a sculptural motivation invested in the specificity of objecthood; he comments that, ‘for me, making sculpture is not a conceptual or immaterial practice, it’s physical. I settled on wood as my medium because it’s structural, but also malleable and alive.’ The artist expertly sculpts his material using a carefully chosen palette of tools; often beginning without a predetermined blueprint for the final piece, Christopher works intuitively to create poignant and poetic forms that respond to a personal narrative or reflection and which, in turn, elicit a powerful emotional response from the viewer

Specifically made for the Gallery, inspiration for Christopher’s Skipping Stone series comes from his treasured time skipping stones with his daughter on the Hudson River: ‘It's a way we end each day together. We love searching for the perfect river stone; the shapes are so beautiful to hold - sometimes we can't bear to toss the good ones into the river, and we end up putting them in our pockets, bringing them home and stacking them up’. He uses locally sourced wood such as black American walnut, ash, cherry and white oak and sensitively hand carves each piece into smooth elliptical pebble shapes, expressively balanced to form the structure of the work.

Tulipwood, poplar, pine, plywood and brass hardware

274 H x 114 W x 77 D cm
107.9 H x 44.9 W x 30 D In

Description

Standing nearly three meters tall, it carries the presence of architecture. Its silhouette recalls a doorway, a shrine, or a tomb long before the work reveals itself as a cabinet. The work takes its name from linenfold, a late Gothic carving tradition in which wood was painstakingly carved to resemble folded fabric. During my research, I became increasingly interested in the material culture of late medieval Europe, particularly the devotional objects, furniture, and architecture produced during centuries shaped by recurrent plague. Rather than memorializing catastrophe directly, these works created places of permanence, ritual, and refuge. They offered psychological shelter as much as physical function. That history acquired unexpected resonance while making this work during the pandemic. The home suddenly carried an unfamiliar emotional weight. It became sanctuary, workplace, refuge, and place of isolation all at once. I found myself returning to historical forms that had already carried similar burdens, not to recreate them, but to ask what they might still offer. Closed, the cabinet presents itself as a monumental draped form whose weight is immediately felt. The carved surface transforms rigid timber into cloth that appears to settle under its own gravity. The object seems simultaneously permanent and fleeting, as though something has been covered instead of constructed. It remains intentionally ambiguous whether we are encountering architecture, a figure, a monument, or something closer to an apparition. The movement of the doors is central to the experience of the piece. Mounted on concealed hinges, they open with the quiet resistance and precision of a vault. As they swing outward, the silhouette changes dramatically. The heavy draped mass unfolds into a broad, symmetrical form that can recall wings, an altarpiece, or the opening of a portal. The transformation is dramatic but unhurried. Opening the cabinet becomes a deliberate act, and a pause follows almost automatically before crossing from one condition into another. Although conceived as a drinks cabinet, I have always thought of the work as a vessel for hospitality itself. Sharing food and drink has long marked celebration, grief, remembrance, reconciliation, and welcome. After years of separation, those ordinary rituals no longer felt ordinary. The cabinet became a place where gathering itself could carry a sense of ceremony. The cabinet carries echoes of funerary architecture, reliquaries, Gothic churches, and domestic ritual without belonging completely to any of them. It remains deliberately unresolved. Like the carved folds themselves, it conceals as much as it reveals. The work holds the tension between shelter and exposure, ceremony and everyday life, leaving space for the viewer's own associations to emerge.