Interview

Last december’s Design Miami fair was supposed to be all about celebrating surefire international design stars like the Campana Brothers or Ross Lovegrove (safe bets in a shaky market hoping to compete with the slightly less shaky art market). But out of nowhere, perched in Cristina Grajales’s New York gallery booth, a young upstart Chilean designer was hogging all of the spotlight. Suddenly people weren’t talking about the Campana Brothers or RossLovegrove. They were talking about a 31-year-old, born in Santiago and now living in New York, named Sebastián Errázuriz—or, more enigmatically, “Sebastián E,” as it was written on the gallery wall. The pieces on display included a long glass table with a base made out of an entire overturned Crespon tree, a wall shelf constructed from a fallen tree branch with books stacked along its twisting arms, even a taxidermy duck whose neck and head had been replaced by an adjustable desk lamp. (And let’s not forget his booklet of sketches for a motorboat coffin which suggest in their directional notes that one could sail out into the middle of a lake, drop the motor, and sink for eternity inside the wood box—“You only die once. Why not leave in style?” reads the sales pitch.) Was Errázuriz kidding? Was he trying to establish himself as the court jester of the design world? And if so, why were his pieces so somber and lyrical and rife with a certain eloquent environmental minimalism? The uninitiated were stymied. Cristina Grajales’s gallery experienced a bidding war.

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The truth is, insiders have known about Errázuriz as an artist and a designer (and often confusingly both simultaneously) for a few years now. The multitasker moved from Chile to New York to attend NYU’’s fine arts masters program in 2006. In Chile, he was the scion of an eminent family and something of a local celebrity, mostly for his striking public art installations that once included planting a magnolia tree in the center of Chile’s National Stadium, in effect transforming the sports arena and former political torture grounds for dictator General Augusto Pinochet into a solemn public park for a single week. (He also put a cow rescued from the slaughterhouse out to graze on top of a downtown skyscraper and erected a crane strung with lights over the city like a giant night lamp.) But it’s been in New York where Errázuriz has taken his peculiar design sense—usually a mixture of death and comedy club—to the international stage. He’s made a fur coat out of teddy bears, belts out of belt buckles, and in one particularly ingenious design innovation, a stack of shelves like a set of wood-block piano keys that swivels from the wall when you want to put something on it. Errázuriz has the kind of self-confidence that ensures he will go the distance. His current plans include planting hundreds of white crosses in Central Park to resemble a military cemetery, the construction of a mountain of shredded dollar bills, more tree-based furniture, and a series of paintings depicting all of his ex-girlfriends. Here he talks with artist and mentor Ross Bleckner, who he met while attending NYU. If the two seem like they are sparring, it’s just a sign of mutual respect. After all, artists and designers are pros at pressing each other’s buttons.

ROSS BLECKNER: So tell me something I don’t know.

SEBASTIÁN ERRÁZURIZ: Uh, I don’t know either. That’s the whole thing—I have no idea what’s going to happen or how anything is going to go . . .

BLECKNER: That’s not a good answer. Tell me then what kind of design work you’re doing.

ERRÁZURIZ: I do limited-edition signed and numbered high-end furniture. Normally it’s for collectors who already own a Jeff Koons or an Andy Warhol or a Ross Bleckner and who want to continue filling their houses with amazing pieces. My furniture is mostly collected by people who know a lot about 20th-century design, but mainly it’s trying to give a twist to normal pieces. I like to twist normal objects.

BLECKNER: What do you mean by “give a twist to”?

ERRÁZURIZ: Well, it’s the idea of trying to make you look again at something basic.

BLECKNER: Do you think people really need to look again at a Jeff Koons or an Andy Warhol?

ERRÁZURIZ: No, I don’t necessarily think they need to. They’ve probably looked enough. But those are the people who my collectors tend to be—collectors of nice stuff. But for my design, I’m trying to make the viewer look again.