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In this spatial experiment from 1980 Israeli video artist, Buky Schwartz, plays with the notion of space and perception. 

The artist starts by unrolling a long carpet-like roll of paper on the floor. A half-drawn figure of a chair (the two front legs and part of of the seating pad) can be seen at an angle. He then brings out an actual chair and puts it on top of the drawing. Since the drawing and the actual chair match in size and angle, the real chair fits perfectly on top of the drawing.

For a second there, it looks like a drawing, but he then sits on it. After that he goes out of the picture frame and comes back with a can of black paint and a brush and starts to paint on the paper roll. The viewer can’t see much of what’s going on because this happens behind the real chair.

There’s a sense of mystery and expectation. Once he’s finished painting, Schwartz stands on top of the chair. He steps down and puts the chair away and walla! He appears to be standing on top of the drawn chair; an optical illusion, of course. One almost feels like clapping, as if it were a magic trick.

And in a sense it is a magic trick. There’s a bit of acting involved. Schwartz pretends to jump off of the drawing. The effect is throughly convincing. It looks as if he were jumping from a chair to the floor when in reality he’s just jumping from left to right. One looks at the drawing in disbelief. There is no real chair there. Still, when the artist rolls away the paper, the first reaction is “He’s made the chair disappear!”

There's no editing and the camera remains set in a medium-shot from beginning to end. No real story emerges. Though with video ( in general, as a medium) something of a story always tends to come out. In this case: man prepares trick, performs trick, picks up and leaves. It might not seem as much of a story, but it beats, say, Warhol’s endless shot of the Empire State building.

A jarring noise coming out of some type machinery, is heard during the whole experiment/project. It probably comes from somewhere in the studio. Some type of meaning might be construed from this noise, but my guess is that it wasn’t intended. It’s just background noise. I muted the video as it becomes really hard on the ears right away.

What’s the point of The Chair? It seems open ended. It’s fun to watch, if anything. 

It also messes around with the notion of reality, for instance. It shows that a drawing can pass for the actual thing if placed at the right angle. It makes one look more closely at everyday things--they might just be imitations of reality.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find this or any of Buky Schwartz’ projects on Youtube, but here’s the link to The Chair on viodeoart.net.

Buky Schwartz has kinda caught my eye, so I’ll blog more about him in the next few days.