Exquisite Corpse Collection

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The name of the collection was drawn from the French parlour game of ‘Cadavre Exquis’, invented by the Surrealists in 1925. In the game, a player sketches a body part or other image on a piece of paper, before folding the paper to conceal what they’ve drawn and passing it on to the next player, and so on.

The completed figures tend to be wildly inventive and frequently bizarre. The game relates to A&A’s creative process and captures the wonderful tension in the duo’s back and forth process; with form, patterns and colours bound only by the mandate to celebrate straw marquetry’s dazzling visual effects.

On each of the three pieces, every available surface is clad in richly coloured geometric patterns of straw, an approach differing from tradition, where the painstaking application is reserved only for the front face.

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The lunacy and decadence of A&A’s rigor, culminated in over 14,000 individual, hand-dyed strands of straw applied in the ‘Talleo’ tallboy, over 10,000 in the ‘Longbow’ credenza and over 6,000 in the ‘Archant’ console.

 

Longbow / Credenza / 2020.

Custom dyed rye straw, brass.

65 (h) x 256 (w) x 40 (d) cm.

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Talleo / Tallboy / 2019.

Custom dyed rye straw, brass.

180 (h) x 85 (w) x 36 (d) cm.

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Archant / Console / 2019.

Custom dyed rye straw, brass,

91 (h) x 156 (w) x 36 (d) cm.

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All pieces acquired for private collection (2020)

Images by Victoria Zschommler.