Plyformed Wood Company 1942

Circle Contemporary – West Town
November 20, 2026 – January 8, 2027

Tatianna Adams – Richard Auth – Renata Berdes – Caroline Chun – Barbara Ess – Cole Fox – Emilie Louise Gossiaux – Jason Hirata – Park McArthur – Reverend Joyce McDonald

******Curated by Ella Rose Flood & Ethan Kennemer

I want to talk about the leg splints designed by Charles and Ray Eames in 1942 to fulfill a very specific need for nonmetal, battlefield-ready, paramedical equipment. Old leg splints—old metal leg splints—were cumbersome for a few reasons: they were heavy, unstackable, potentially dangerous in combat, and most importantly, metal was to be used for planes and ammunition. Syphoning electricity from the power lines outside of their apartment building, the designers invented a homemade plywood curing oven and created a mold from Charles’s own leg. The machine was called Kazam! and the splint was to be made out of wood.

The allocation of metal to the military can mimic a form of care. We must not confuse a sense of conflictual safety with care, but we can still think of material allotment as an accommodation.

A plane is like a human with a body and a wingspan. A piece of plywood comes from a tree, which has a trunk and a circulatory system.

The rounded shape of the Eames splint has an undeniable aesthetic appeal. This is certainly therapeutic design. Its contours are generated to fit naturally with the curvature of the body. Slits are cut into the wood to allow for this shaping and are used to strap bandages and apply compression to the limb. Something of human accommodation can be found in this rounding, like the edges of the sinks at my occupational therapist’s office.*

In late 1942 the United States Navy ordered 5,000 units and the designers partnered with a lumber mill and production facility called the Evans Product Company to enable production at this scale. The Eames’s incipient Plyformed Wood Company became the Evans Molded Plywood Products Division, with Charles at the helm of research and development. By the end of the war, there were 150,000 units in circulation.**

I want to talk about the body litter and the coffin-shaped design, prototyped by the company in 1942. This item went through several iterations of hourglass shapes, each form scrapped for failing to support a variety of body types. The most generic human shape was determined to be the coffin. The coffin takes the form of a weighted head and shoulder—the obtuse end of the object—and treats the feet like a vanishing point. This is an optimized human shape. When you are sick, optimization of equipment is important.*** It conjures important values like accessibility of form. When you are dead, optimization of shape is important to save as much space as humanly possible underground at the cemetery.

Opening reception:
November 20, 2026
5:00 – 8:00 pm

Closing hours with the guest curators:
January 8, 2027
5:00 – 8:00 pm

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* there is a medical danger in edges and corners

** there was a sculpture made out of a leg splint

*** an injury is a kind of illness

Ella Rose Flood (b. 1999, Chicago, IL) lives and works in Chicago. Selected solo and two-person exhibitions include Zian Gallery, Hangzhou, China (forthcoming); Container and Last Display, Bodenrader, Chicago, IL; Reposoir (with Dominick Di Meo), Simone Subal Gallery, New York, NY; These are just the words you know the feeling, Galerie Hussenot, Paris, France; The Allotter, in lieu, Los Angeles, CA; Only Silver, Lubov, New York, NY; Memorial Universe!, Jargon Projects, Chicago, IL; and Forever (with Graham Wiebe), Palazzo San Giuseppe, Polignano a Mare, Italy. Selected three-person and group exhibitions include The Vandals, Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY; Wretched Mirror, Ellie Rines Gallery, New York, NY; Enabler and Vanilla Conjuring (纵容者和寻常戏法), Lubov, New York, NY; Spectral Fine Arts Trust (with Boz Deseo Garden and Graham Wiebe), Final Hot Desert, London, UK; Dog Breath, Stop-Gap Projects, Columbia, Missouri; Bodenrader, Chicago, IL; Wanderlust, Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, CA; and Quiet, Cold, Jargon Projects, Chicago, IL.

Ethan Kennemer (b. 1996, Los Angeles, CA) is founder and director of the gallery Bodenrader in Chicago. He previously founded the gallery Jargon Projects, which operated in Chicago between 2020 and 2023.

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Tags: arts of life, Barbara Ess, Caroline Chun, Circle Contemporary, Cole Fox, Ella Rose Flood, Emilie Louise Gossiaux, Ethan Kennemer, Jason Hirata, Park McArthur, Plyformed Wood Company 1942, Renata Berdes, Reverend Joyce McDonald, Richard Auth, Tatianna Adams, West Town - Tatianna Adams – Richard Auth – Renata Berdes – Caroline Chun – Barbara Ess – Cole Fox – Emilie Louise Gossiaux – Jason Hirata – Park McArthur – Reverend Joyce McDonald