Night Gallery is pleased to present a recent work by the Los Angeles-based artist Sean Townley in the Platform section of the 2022 Armory Show. Gassing the Imperial Throne centers itself with a found throne that has been sealed within a clear, custom-fabricated plastic bag. The ornately-carved, mahogany piece is a Greek Orthodox bishop’s throne, and is flanked on either side by tanks of argon gas, a conservation compound used to preserve aging wood artifacts. By depriving the object of oxygen, Townley symbolically destabilizes the power and sacrosanctity of the institution it represents; inflating the plastic bag with the noxious gas suggests the necessity to eradicate imperialism and religious empire from contemporary political life.
