Barbican or the Dark Object of Desire

Celine treated herself to the small Barbican armchair in December 2020.  She shared this incredible text with us a few months later. 

It is green and raw. English, green and brutal, without halftone.

Seventies and so British. Frenziedly contemporary.

It takes on the colors of a damp meadow where the morning light plays on
each blade of grass in order to highlight the most beautiful nuance, chiaroscuro...

Its lines have the verticality of a concrete wall, modern and imposing, and
the horizontality of a medieval stone rampart, creeping and aligning itself with
the sides of a tower, always aiming at the horizon.

Barbican is his baptismal name; the Barbican, his inspiration. THE
brutalism of its lines competes with the softness of its short velvet, as if
a wild vegetable moss had sprung from the loophole of a medieval wall
and cold to soften the contours and sharp edges.

Barbican exudes the urbanism of the City and the rurality of an English field,
besieges a living room or office, takes up all the space on a creaky floor or
a tufted carpet sits enthroned and provokes the senses of the human who loses his gaze
on its printed velvet and which ends up caressing its seat, bewitched. Painting
lively, convincing lines, clear optics, validated suavity.

Because Barbican is an object where you sit down and relax, passionate. But he is
above all a green and contrasting spot that we find ourselves contemplating, from
the other side of the living room, the office, the sofa. That we desire, hypnotized.

An object, an armchair, a philosophy, a nostalgia; he makes us slide towards
Kantian reflections, shows itself, imposes itself, lives itself, is envied. Then we
let us daydream, Cartesians, looking beyond the file, seeking to escape from this spatial portion that it occupies, small in size, so large in meaning. It invades space, assaults our thoughts.

An armchair with a diverted function, an art object seat, a decoration,
crowding out any other object daring to venture too close to it, moving its lines and
inflating the single circle of its drawing, like a target causing a
blowgun

Boastful and pretentious, he exhibits the notoriety of his lines which cross and
break, a labyrinth of a treasure hunt leading to the end point of the file and
of which only the creator holds the secret.

Barbican has a strong personality, and before even thinking about putting the
buttocks, feet, his thoughts, he will hold his gaze and maintain the distance,
will let himself be coveted. Embodying the desire for touch, fueling curiosity
of the eye.

When an armchair opens the door to ideas for you, it becomes a concept.
And a concept is not easy to place in a living room, an office or in front of a
sofa... It IS the living room, the office or the view from the sofa...

Céline Le Her, February 9, 2021