Brief Forays into Reality
DREW ABRAHAMSON WRITING, COLLECTION NAMING
WRITING, COLLECTION NAMING
”Grab your things, we are staying. There is no need to depart today with such an excess of tomorrows. With these seven functional objects, Drew Abrahamson certifies one person’s escapism can in fact be another’s collectible design.
Born into a su(per)reality, these are products who return home removing life’s mundanity like shoes at the door, then doze off to do their best wheeling and dealing. Unmoved by the marketplace of ideas, their interests lie in the business of dreams.
First drawn at scale on the studio wall, objects that have furnished the interior of their maker's mind at length are grafted into an uncertain existence. Abrahamson chooses curiousity over convenience; numerous individuals from innumerable disciplines find sacrilege in his methods. Once the drawing is on the wall he admits "from here it all gets a little more cowboy. Some roads are rougher than others".
Conceived as a means of bypassing unfortunate realities and unpalatable nostalgias, this excursion elsewhere finds itself back here. At the threshold of the real and surreal, each defunct without the other.
An amalgamation of modern civilisation is contained in Abrahamson's layers of wood; sourcing and forming each soft curve by hand from salvaged materials. Leftovers of societal unrest, protest signs, materials swiped from building sites, discarded large-scale paintings of Michael Jackson and an especially fruitful loading bay behind the artist’s studio.
Squaring a circle is less a concern for Abrahamson, instead he focuses on bending the breakable. Some call it pragmatic dreaming, others call it a shelf. Subverting actuality is a lot like riding a bike, easy to recall, rarely remembered. Try this at home.”