Tough Love by Sebastian Errazuriz

Courts have one sole task: to fulfill the demands of justice. Cultural institutions have over time adopted more than one task. The question this exhibition poses is: What is the task of cultural institutions today?

In this exhibition, culture, in the form of art and design objects, operates as a place to test society’s deeds. This exhibition calls into question citizenship, art and design as acts of passive observance by inserting active forces within the viewer, the buyer or the cultural consumer with consequences beyond the gallery walls.

Tough Love unloads a series of objects, from clothing to paintings, and traces social burdens that each of us carry. The exhibition reminds us that justice and evil are not things that are witnessed but exercised by acts of difference and indifference. Tough Love reminds us that too often we limit ourselves to just being humans, forgetting the responsibility we have to act as citizens, and conversely, that as citizens of narrow ideological lands, we often forget our humanity.

The work of Sebastian Errazuriz collapses product design and artistic practice with socially engaged positions. The works in this exhibition unveil questions of inequality, violence, fear or terror through a series of pieces that dwell on spaces of familiarity and uncanniness, simultaneously appealing and atrocious. Taking as context an over-informed society, the works presented force us not only to look and reflect on what is happening, but to reconsider our responsibilities as citizens.

Sebastian Errazuriz, born in Santiago, Chile in 1977, was raised in London. Errazuriz took art classes in Washington, film courses in Edinburgh, and earned a design degree in Santiago. He later received his Master’s in Fine Arts from New York University. At age 28, Sebastian became the second living South American artist to have work auctioned at Sotheby’s Important Twentieth Century Design Auction.

Errazuriz was selected as one of the top emerging designers by I.D. Magazine in 2007, and received the title of Chilean Designer of the Year in 2010. His large-scale, public artwork has received critical acclaim, and his furniture pieces are incorporated in over forty international exhibitions in cities such as Tokyo, New York, Paris and Barcelona. His design work has been incorporated in exhibitions and pop up shows at the Copper Hewitt, National Museum of Design in New York, The Vitra Museum in Weil AM Rheim in Germany, and the National Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago, Chile. Sebastian’s work is a part of the permanent collection of Coorning Museum of Glass and several important international private collections. Sebastian’s design, fashion, and public artwork have been featured on CNN, Good Morning America, and NY1.

Errazuriz lives and works in New York, with offices and workshops in Santiago, Chile.