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Gunnar Aagaard Andersen. Armchair. 1964 110

Poured polyurethane, 29 1/2 x 44 1/4 x 35 1/4" (74.9 x 112.4 x 89.5 cm). Gift of the designer

Paul Galloway: My name is Paul Galloway. I work in MoMA's Department of Architecture and Design as the Collection Specialist.

August Galloway: Hello, my name is August Galloway. I am 13 years old, and I'm Paul Galloway's son.

Paul: So August, what we're looking at is a very strange armchair by the Danish artist Gunnar Aagaard Andersen.

August: It's a chair made of poop. That's basically what it is. There's no other words to describe this.

Paul: What makes you think it looks like poop?

August: It's brown. It looks very mushy. It feels like if someone sat in that it would just splash, like a puddle would...

Paul: Oh, interesting. This was made in 1964 and it's made of poured polyurethane, which is a kind of plastic material that can be either rigid or flexible.

August: How do you think Andersen made this chair?

Paul: He hand-poured the polyurethane foam without any molds, allowing parts of it to expand, and then repeated the process over and over again until he reached the final form of an armchair. He couldn't exactly control how the foam expanded or dripped or pooled, so a big part of this process was leaving things up to chance. Every chair he made was different. And he experimented with color as well, which is where we get our very specific brown chair.

August: It looks like a giant turd, an actual turd.

Paul: They're not all brown. Some of them he made were white. Would it bother you less? Cause then it's like melting ice cream, if it's white.

August: Yes. That's far better.

Paul: Okay, so it's the color. Just think of it as chocolate. It looks like brownie batter.

August: No, it doesn't. [Laughs]