WINTER HAVEN, Fla. – Those who wander onto Old Thornhill Road in Winter Haven are likely to spot an incredibly strange structure: a 24-foot-tall “potty chair” standing by the roadway.
It’s an odd sight. The giant chair features a hole in the center of its seat, and an open-mouthed clown face is painted on a slab of vinyl beneath it.
This massive structure — dubbed the “HOHO Chair” — is the brainchild of local artist Steve Chayt.
The chair was originally given life in 1992 as two miniature models (one each for himself and a friend), which Chayt said was inspired by the works of French sculptor Marcel Duchamp.
“When I first had the idea for the HOHO Chair, I didn’t question or analyze what it meant,” Chayt writes. “Without knowing the final size and location, I made two small wooden mock-ups.”
In fact, the eventual HOHO Chair is constantly pointing toward the coordinates of Duchamp’s art piece entitled “Étant donnés,” which is located at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Duchamp was an avid Dada artist, whose artwork was often created to challenge the contemporary notions of art during his time. He often created strange, abstract sculptures as part of this mission — something that Chayt took to heart.
“His premise is that it’s the artist who chooses his art,” Chayt explained.
A set of coordinates found on the underside of the clown-printed vinyl shows the coordinates for both the HOHO Chair and the Étant donnés sculpture, along with the phrase, “Put Your Trust Here.”
According to Chayt, the clown printed on the vinyl (nicknamed the “Catcher”) acts as a metaphorical “wormhole” to Duchamp’s piece in Philadelphia.
“Anything that drops through the seat and hits the Catcher, the entrance to the wormhole, is transported to the anteroom in the museum facing the large wooden doors of (Duchamp’s) work,” Chayt adds. “A wormhole, predicted by Rosen and Einstein, connects two points in spacetime. This story explains the various parts of this work — the chair, the catcher, its location and position, and satisfies my desire to pay homage to Marcel Duchamp.”
When describing his mindset for imagining the concept, Chayt says the following:
“Once I started preparations for building the chair, I began thinking about how I could create an associated story or myth for the structure. Myth played an integral role in the installations I did in the (1970s). I like the way mythic stories play with the concept of truth.
They seem to reveal some ultimate truth without having to be factually accurate. I am not so interested in ‘real’ myths as much as a parody of a myth; a post-modern myth.
After all, we are past the time of the ancient heroic myths and are surrounded by the ‘cartoon’ myths of popular culture. I also wanted to align the myth with science and technology but in a way that Marcel Duchamp might have called Physique Amusante or Fun(ny) or playful Physics.”
Steven Chayt, “Adding Playful Physics”
And while Chayt had come up with the idea for the chair over 30 years ago, it wasn’t until he retired in 2014 that he decided to move forward with building the larger model of the HOHO Chair.
He told News 6 that he got a building permit from the county for the chair, and he and a group of his students got to work putting it together. However, that didn’t stop neighbors from rallying against his creation.
“It’s essentially a toilet,” one resident told the Lakeland Ledger in 2015. “He sets the tone for the front of the neighborhood, and it’s disgusting.”
Despite the pushback, Chayt said he pushed ahead, and he finally unveiled the chair during a public viewing in January 2016.
Chayt recounts that during the viewing, he exhibited a “movie” meant to help the viewer imagine what it would be like to go through the wormhole.
[WATCH THE MOVIE BY CLICKING IN THE MEDIA PLAYER BELOW]
Nowadays, the chair still sits as a roadside attraction, though Chayt explained he has to perform minor repairs every once in a while to keep it in good condition.
For more information on the eccentric art piece or to reach out about HOHO Chair merchandise (including souvenir magnets), you can visit Chayt’s website here.
Or to read up on other strange places and people from across Central Florida, head to News 6′s “Florida Fables” page here.
You can listen to every episode of Florida’s Fourth Estate in the media player below:
Copyright 2024 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.
