A Leather Saddle for a Chimera
Project by Markus Hansen, 2012

By hijacking the utilitarian nature of this object, and reconfiguring it for use by an imaginary or mythical being, this piece aims to reawaken the mind to the deep-seated memory of a fundamental conquest: that of the animal world, in our environment and in our spirits.

If the domestication of canines by humans is one of the cornerstones of civilization, this piece takes it up a notch, evoking a modification of space-time that brings mythical new ergonomic qualities to the saddles of the Pony Express. The territory mapped out by those men, a new kind of centaurs, heralded the birth of a new society and the cultural supremacy of the white man.

Today, we are in a literal fight to the death with the limits of our own ideas. Duking it out with our conception of the real so as to free ourselves from this anchor in the living, here represented by the spontaneous pull to create in the form of a flower. The carnal aspect of this transformed seat evokes the excretions and secretions of horses, which, in days gone by, were used for medicinal or magical purposes. The craft of the saddler and the tradition to which he is the heir are here employed to call into question the ultimate aim of that very craft, and a great beauty emerges from the process.

An object to contemplate in the absence of the animal.