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Bubble Belt Chair front, 56x28x42"
Douglas Fir from Canary Row in Monterey, CA. -
Bubble Belt Chair side, 56x28x42
Douglas Fir from Canary Row in Monterey, CA. -
Grass Hopper Chair, 46X25X36
Solid Oak dunnage wood. This dunnage wood spent 60 years on the Santa Fe train line and 10 years drying out in a shack in the Los Angeles. -
Grass Hopper Chair, 46x25x36"
Solid Oak dunnage wood. This dunnage wood spent 60 years on the Santa Fe train line and 10 years drying out in a shack in the Los Angeles. -
Kick Ass Chair front, 42x18x36"
Douglas Fir found on Alameda St. Los Angeles CA. -
Kick Ass Chair side, 42x18x36"
Douglas Fir found on Alameda St. Los Angeles CA. -
Scissor Dining Chair side, 26x18x33"
Douglas Fir found on the streets of Hollywood, CA. Scrap leather seat. -
Scissor Dining Chair, 26x18x33"
Douglas Fir found on the streets of Hollywood, CA. Scrap leather seat. -
SOLD
Spring Back Bankers Chair front, 44x19x33"
This chair’s back, seat and springs are from two vintage bankers chairs found in an alley in Los Angeles. The curved legs are from two discarded Ikea chairs. The feet are locally forged from found metal -
SOLD
Spring Back Bankers Chair side, 44x19x33"
This chair’s back, seat and springs are from two vintage bankers chairs found in an alley in Los Angeles. The curved legs are from two discarded Ikea chairs. The feet are locally forged from found metal
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Designer Andrew Riiska has employed the underside of a wooden table to carve a hidden field of mounds, revealed to the viewer fully only once they were seated, knees and hands brushing up against the nubs. His furniture, which encompasses elements of design, woodwork, sculpture and art, are tactile journeys of discovery, invitations to participate. “I’m trying to get people to interact with the work,” he says. Such are the series of Riiska chairs in Wood Works, in which his mastery of the material and simple, time-consuming organic finishes fans out to assemblage and deepen his conceptual bent. The ephemeral bubble wrap that is entwined in the use of one such object, prompts the user to consider our everyday wrap-and-waste as they must pull, tear, and discard with each sitting. Though Riiska has occasionally dwelled in the world of computerized modeling systems to define his forms, here, he returns to “the world of the analog.” The table saws, planers, chisels and hand saws of his youth.
The artist has been compelled to forge objects since he was four-years-old, literally. When, equipped with a set of plastic tools in a kid’s tool belt, he marched out to build a barn on his family’s property only to be turned back by the carpenters that had been employed to do so. He settled by coaxing a jewelry box for his mother from the men’s scrap. At age eleven, he would enter an apprenticeship in building with a neighbor, the industrial designer Tom Bush. While Riiska often acts as a designer and/or manufactures multiples, his process and works, as easily, enter the realm of art. End function, form, size, tone, touch, guided by the reclaimed wood that is, other than his hands and the viewer’s interaction, Riiska’s basic material. Andrew Riiska has been exhibited in galleries in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles and was featured in the 2010 California Design Biennial at Pasadena Museum of California Art.
Andrew Riiska, CV Highlights
2014 Andrew Riiska Wood Works solo exhibition The Good Luck Gallery Los Angeles, CA
2014 Group Hug, group exhibition, The Good Luck Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2012 Wrong Side Up solo exhibition Jai Jai Gallery Los Angeles, CA