German 'Neues Deutsches Design'

Neues Deutsches Design: The Post-Functionalist Avant-Garde, 1982–1990

A shopping cart, cut and bent into the rough shape of a chair, its chrome bars still bearing the scuffs and scratches of supermarket use. This is Frank Schreiner's 'Consumer's Rest' of 1983—a piece of furniture that functioned poorly as seating but perfectly as provocation. The wire mesh digs into the back. The proportions refuse comfort. The title, printed on a small tag, completes the object's meaning: rest, in this context, refers not to relaxation but to remainder, the leftover, the thing discarded after consumption.

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