Chest of Drawers c. 1938

Francis Borelli made this drawing of a chest of drawers, but we don't know when or with what. Look at the surface; it's almost like a technical drawing. I get the sense that Borelli paid attention to the flat shapes, but also to the way light hits the surface of the wood, the process by which form becomes something we understand. There's something deeply satisfying about the color here: these ochres and reds almost create the sense of an optical illusion, where the surface is constantly shifting and changing. Zooming into the lower portion of the chest, you can see a geometric pattern. There's a circle motif in the centre, surrounded by smaller squares and rectangles. It makes me think about how a painting is just the same as any object we live with; it’s another way of framing our daily lives. I'm reminded of the geometric patterns that the artist Piet Mondrian developed; I think both of them were trying to show the underlying architecture of the world that we inhabit, but in completely different ways. Ultimately, art is a form that embraces ambiguity, so there is no right or wrong answer.