Christopher Kurtz & Dana Barnes
Between Us: Tête-à-Tête, 2024
Carved basswood form and hand-made rope
320 H x 183 W x 140 D cm
126 H x 72 W x 55 D in
126 H x 72 W x 55 D in
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Description
Between Us: Tête-à-Tête is a collaboration between Dana Barnes and myself. Her monumental hand-made ropes—created through labor-intensive processes of spinning, knotting, dyeing, and compression, meet my carved basswood forms in a work shaped through mutual influence. Neither material is subordinate to the other. The wood depends on the fiber as much as the fiber depends on the wood. Together they create something neither could achieve alone. The work offers a place for two bodies to sit within a structure of tension, softness, weight, and trust. The dense knots record thousands of gestures made by hand. Their scale is both protective and overwhelming, creating an architecture that hovers between sanctuary and entanglement. In contrast, the carved basswood seat remains quiet and open, shaped as a vessel for shared experience. The work was conceived during a period of extraordinary division in American life. Political polarization, social fragmentation, and technologies that promised connection often seemed to widen the distance between people—even within families and intimate relationships. The title resists easy sentimentality. Between Us names the uncertain territory that exists between any two people: affection and misunderstanding, dependence and autonomy, intimacy and distance. The carved seat never touches the ground. It is held in suspension by a network of tension, making trust not simply a metaphor, but the physical condition that allows the work to exist.Join our mailing list
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