El-Hassan, Róza: Stretched Chair from the Stretched Objects Series (1995)

Róza El-Hassan’s Stretched Chair is part of a larger series created in the mid-nineties, in which the artist, concerned with the problems of space, has placed stretched versions of various everyday objects in the exhibition space (irons, glasses, cables, etc.). The objects symbolically try to occupy as much of the space as possible by stretching themselves. All this is, of course, an illusion. The illusory shapes and forms that we can now easily create with computers are difficult to create with traditional sculptural techniques. At the same time, El-Hassan’s objects are also ironic commentaries on the rise of the computer, in that they attempt to create a low-tech, cheap but more human-intensive way of creating a technical effect, while breaking down the traditional framework of sculpture.