Brittingham Gallery
June 6 - August 22, 1999

This exhibition presents two of artist Wendy Jacob's squeeze chairs and a series of drawn designs by renowned animal scientist Temple Grandin. The Squeeze Chair Project grew out of a three-year collaboration between Jacob and Grandin. Jacob investigates aspects of physical presence and touch in her art. Her sculptures often recreate physiological phenomena and explore mechanical surrogates for human actions. Grandin is known for her research in humane livestock management.

Grandin, who was diagnosed with autism at age three, suffers severe anxiety from human touch. Based on her observations that a squeeze chute calmed cattle under restraint, she created an apparatus for herself to benefit from the positive physiological impulses induced by a hug. Jacob's Squeeze Chairs are a living room alternative to Grandin's original plywood panel machine. They are meant to be interactive: one visitor sits in the chair while another works a foot pedal activating the arms to slowly close around the sitter. Jacob's interest lies in the sensations arising from the chair's embrace and how these feelings and the mechanical actions affect notions of the body's boundaries.

Throughout her career, Jacob has addressed the question of where bodily experience lies amidst the opposing concepts of mind and matter, imagination and science, machine and flesh. Jacob is a graduate of The School of the Art Institute, Chicago, and has exhibited internationally for almost a decade.

The exhibition was organized by the Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A 24-page catalogue documenting The Squeeze Chair Project is available for purchase in the Gallery Shop.

Funding for the Wisconsin presentation of this exhibition has been provided by The Art League of the Madison Art Center; the Exhibition Initiative Fund; the Madison Art Center's 1999-2000 Sustaining Benefactors; and a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin.

Return to Madison Art Center Homepage