A CHAIR IS A CHAIR

"(...) On the wall opposite to the dismantled chair hangs a front spoiler. People say it looks like a futurist artwork. That is THE issue everything seems to be about: Design, exhibited in an art gallery, curated by industrial designer Konstantin Grcic - Design-Art! "Design Real" heats up the already hot debate: Can design be art? Is design art? Does design deserve to become art?

Whatever, I think, and turn to the spoiler again. I look into the eyes of the yellow Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4 Spyder. Like I used to do. Until was about eleven years old I rarely looked at cars as a whole. I looked into their faces. There were sad and deceitful eyes, semi-closed tired eyes, thunderous mouths, sneers and friendly smiles. The friendliest (although a bit featherbrained) smile is that of the Beetle. I smiled back at them all.

To make sense of the world we organise sensations into meaningful information. Weirdly enough, though, our mind can hover between different perceptions of one and the same object. An issue of Gestalt psychology. We all know the Rubin's vase aka. Rubin's face, this flip image by the Danish psychologist Edgar Rubin. Vase, face, vase, face. The object does not change at all, but the way we see it somehow does. I think of Wittgenstein's duck-rabbit, a similar figure, that he used to illustrate his discussion on seeing vs seeing as. Wittgenstein disdained preconceived pictures. With good reason. The world would be boring if things were only what they are supposed to be. Seeing can be quite fascination, seeing as even more so.
Grcic seems to think so, too. (...)"