IMG_20180225_165323

In Robert Therrien's Under the Table, 1994, the viewer is both in the world of imaginary giants and in the world of remembered childhood. Fusing Alice in Wonderland with the Duchampian tradition of the readymade, Therrien constructs a doppelganger from an everyday object, both displaying his visual wit and actualizing literary or imaginative fantasy in three-dimensional space. The table exudes an extraordinary aura, compelling one to walk underneath the table and conjuring the physical memory of being under the table of one’s childhood home. Complicated and powerful, the work offers fresh ideas of what a table, sculpture, and memory can mean.