Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1540685
A chair with hips, a table with a wink. "Humor invites you in, sensuality reminds you of your own body," Chris Wolston says of the furniture he creates. "Together they make the object less about utility, and more about desire, fantasy, and play." Wolston explores those ideas in "Profile in Ecstasy," opening Friday, November 7, at Dallas Contemporary. The exhibition offers a focused survey of lighting, furniture, and custom- designed rugs, with inspirations ranging from Art Nouveau and pre-Columbian symbolism to architectural excess. The installation is accompanied by a pulsing soundtrack of movement and light created by Wolston's husband, filmmaker David Sierra. Trained at the Rhode Island School of Design and later awarded a Fulbright grant to study pre-Columbian ceramics in Colombia, Wolston still maintains a studio in Medellín. The Future Perfect has represented him for years and just closed his New York solo exhibition, "Gilding the Lily," at the end of October. The artist's work fetches thousands of dollars on the primary market; at auction, a wicker Nalgona chair realized $22,680 at Christie's New York in 2024. His work is held in museum collections around the world, and he has Pushing Furniture Past its Logic collaborated with brands including Dolce & Gabbana, Fendi, and 3.1 Phillip Lim. Colombia remains one of Wolston's deepest wells of influence, with materials rooted in its craft traditions — terracotta, sand- casting, brick-making — anchoring his experiments. "When I cast aluminum or build with terracotta, I'm tapping into centuries of makers who treated those materials as ritual," he says. "Lately, I've been weaving aluminum like it's fabric and scaling terracotta up to architectural proportions. I don't want to know the outcome too soon; improvisation keeps the work curious and a little unruly." "Chris Wolston: Profile in Ecstasy," at Dallas Contemporary, November 7, 2025 – February 1, 2026; dallascontemporary.org. Chris Wolston riffs on Grace Jones, desire, and pushing past logic. Ecstasy as art. Chris Wolston: The show is about ecstasy in all its forms: spiritual, sensual, material. I wanted to create a space where design isn't just useful, but something that slips into the body and imagination. I hope people leave feeling that furniture and objects don't just sit in the background of life — they can spark desire, invite play, and shift how we think about our own bodies moving through space. Grace note. CW: At the center [of the exhibit] is an illuminated fountain portrait of Grace Jones, an icon of glamour, power, and otherness. Her presence sets the tone for the whole show. Alongside her, I'm showing new terracotta works and rattan figures that exaggerate the body into something both surreal and celebratory. Dallas Contemporary gave me the scale to present the works almost like a procession, part fashion runway, part drag ball, where each piece commands its own spotlight. The museum's vast open spaces really allowed us to play. The curator, Glenn Adamson, created four elevated runways as a framework for the show, turning the galleries into a performance space where the works are not static objects but performers in dialogue. One word. CW: Transformation. I love pushing materials past their "logic." Clay becomes furniture, rattan becomes figural sculpture, metal behaves like cloth. Each material resists and surprises, and that tug-of-war is what brings the pieces alive. Process. CW: I usually begin with a story or a form, something bodily or symbolic, and then I ask how someone might inhabit it. Function comes in later, but not as a compromise. I like layering: A chair can also be a sculpture, a vessel can also be a figure. That tension makes the work vibrate. Craft and culture. CW: Colombia gives me both material richness and cultural Chris Wolston's show at Dallas Contemporary teases fantasy and desire — and recasts furniture as performance. By Rebecca Sherman Chris Wolston with his Aurora sofa 114