Rachel Whiteread: Daybed

Fall 2000

The sculptor Rachel Whiteread has designed a daybed, which has been put into production in England.  The piece will be shown at A/D this fall for the first time in the United States.  All four variations–upholstered in green-brown wool, light blue, tan and dark grey–will be installed along with drawings related to the piece.

Although the upholstered daybed is a classic form in the canon of modernist furniture design, this daybed is closely related to a group of Whiteread's sculptures that explore space underneath a single bed.  Horizontal depressions in the upholstered surface mark a bed's slats; a hole in each corner marks the leg in each corner of a bed frame.  Lying on the daybed, the viewer is in fact lying on the materialization of the space underneath another bed.

Whiteread's daybed was first installed in the exhibition "Please Touch" at The Lighthouse in Glasglow.  Much of the above text is drawn from an essay in that exhibition catalogue, written by Fiona Bradley of the Hayward Gallery, London.  For a complete copy of that essay or for furtherinformation about the exhibition, please call A/D at the number below.