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Oct 17, 2024

Can’t we all just get along

Hugh Hayden’s inhospitable picnic table captures the difficulty of inhabiting shared spaces

Hugh Hayden. Can't we all just get along, 2020. Hornbeam with steel hardware and oak dowels, Overall: 206 × 363 × 254 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario. Purchase, with funds from the Modern and Contemporary Curatorial Committee, 2022. 2022/8 © Hugh Hayden. Installation view, Henry Moore Centre, Art Gallery of Ontario, 2024. Photo: AGO

A picnic table on a warm day— this image might conjure up memories of family picnics, birthday parties in the park, or school lunches spent trading snacks with friends.

Picnic tables have long been a public, communal space to share food, conversation, and experiences. If you make your way up to Level 2 of the AGO, you’ll find a picnic table placed between Henry Moore’s sculptures. Rather than an invitation to picnic among the works of Moore, this inhabitable picnic table asks viewers to re-think the symbolism of everyday objects and the difficulty of inhabiting communal spaces.

Hugh Hayden’s wooden sculpture, Can’t we all just get along (2020), leaves little space for gathering as large, phallic-like branches extend from the tabletop and benches of this life-sized picnic table. These expertly smoothed branches shoot off in random directions, crossing and weaving around each other in a way that makes it seem like the table is fighting itself. As you move closer to the work, being mindful of the branches sticking out, you can see a polka-dot pattern on the sculpture marking areas where Hayden inserted dowels into splitting wood.

A detail image of Hugh Hayden's sculpture Can't we all just get along (2020). This image is a close up of one of the branches emerging from the bench of the picnic table, highlighting the dowels Hayden inserted into splitting wood

Hugh Hayden. Can't we all just get along (detail), 2020. Hornbeam with steel hardware and oak dowels, Overall: 206 × 363 × 254 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario. Purchase, with funds from the Modern and Contemporary Curatorial Committee, 2022. © Hugh Hayden, courtesy Lisson Gallery. 2022/8

Can’t we all just get along is an example of Hayden's mastery of natural materials. The Dallas-born, New York City-based sculptor primarily works with wood and his ten-year career as an architect helped inform his impressive knowledge of natural materials and hospitality design. While Hayden received his MFA from Columbia in 2018, he quickly rose to acclaim before graduating through his life-sized installations and culinary performance art.

The crux of Hayden’s practice involves altering common natural and manmade objects to create uncanny versions that change viewers’ perspective on the world around them. A recurring motif in Hayden’s work is critiquing the American dream by altering everyday gathering sites such as dining sets, school desks, and picnic tables. Hayden makes these sites uncomfortable or impossible to inhabit, sculpting thorns, pointy branches, and coarse bristles onto areas people normally sit on. This inhospitable design, as seen in Can’t we all just get along, represents the inaccessible reality of the American dream for many, including Black communities. Hayden also wanted the conflicted nature of Can’t we all just get along to represent the difficulty of engaging and interacting with others at a shared table.

A detail image of Hugh Hayden's sculpture Can't we all just get along (2020). This image is a close up of one of the branches that has natural moss in it

Furthering the uncanny nature of his work, Hayden works with wood in a way he likens to receiving a “chicken drumstick with its foot still attached.” By maintaining natural features such as sap, bark, and moss, his work aims to remind viewers of the connection between wood and trees, especially in a world where everyday interactions with wood often come in orderly shapes. Hayden allows the wood to dictate where his sculpture goes, following its natural, irregular curves.

The wood used in each sculpture is consciously chosen by Hayden for its historical and social context. For Can’t we all just get along, Hayden uses Hornbeam wood, a notoriously difficult wood to work with that is commonly used to build fences. The social context of Hornbeam seems like a response to the title of this work, suggesting that there are fences or barriers that prevent unity. The barriers to reaching unity are also exemplified in how the appendages of this table appear to fight each other.

A full work image of Hugh Hayden's sculpture, Can't we all just get along. This sculpture is a wooden picnic table with phallic-like appendages branching out of the table in various directions

The title of this work is based on a quote from Rodney King, who was a victim of police brutality in 1991. Though King survived the incident, riots broke out across Los Angeles after three of the officers involved in the incident were acquitted. Attempting to stop the riots, King made a TV appearance where he pleaded, “can we - can we all get along?” While Can’t we all just get along was created in 2020, Hayden actually began working on the sculpture before the 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests. The timeliness of this work speaks to how Hayden carefully explores the continuing reality of Black Americans in his practice. The dialogue between Moore and Hayden in the Henry Moore Sculpture Centre emphasizes not only their expertise as sculptors but also how their work uniquely responds to the complexities and anxieties of their respective times.

Though Can’t we all just get along was not necessarily inspired by the 2020 BLM protests, the Solomon B. Hayden Fellowship for Art History was. Named after his father, who was a math teacher, this fellowship supports the partial tuition of two Black students studying at Columbia’s art and art history department. Inspired by BLM bail funds, Hayden created this fellowship with Lisson Gallery to address inequities within his own field.

Experience the conflicting nature of Hugh Hayden’s Can’t we all just get along on Level 2 of the AGO in the Henry Moore Sculpture Centre (gallery 251).

Can’t we all just get along

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