David Diao Has The Floor

a brown jute doormat with the word welcome in large, all caps red, is overpainted with a fat black spraypainted stripe from upper right to lower left, a 1996 work by david diao being sold at wright auction in february 2026
David Diao, Untitled, 1996, spray paint on jute, 27 x 16 x 1 in., selling 4 Feb 2026 at Wright

I never really thought of David Diao as an sculptor, and though it really does feel like it belongs on the floor, technically, this unwelcome mat IS painted. Wright put it in their Chicago sale, but there’s nothing in Chicago in Diao’s 1990s exhibition history, so maybe it comes from a Chicago collector. Even with no info, it really does feel like it captures the moment right now.

a deep brown horizontal painting with a cream rectangle floating on the right side. the rectangle has five holes in it that reveal the brown paint below, and which references the floorplan for the furniture in philip johnson's living room. along the bottom of the painting is a text, i think in vinyl lettering, that reads: a visitor to the glass house: mr johnson, do you ever move the furniture around? johnson: why would i? would you change anything at chartres cathedral? this 2007 painting by david diao is at tanya leighton in berlin
David Diao, Do You Ever Move the Furniture?, 2007, acrylic and vinyl on canvas, 18×36 in., via Tanya Leighton

But it still barely cracks my top five floor-related Diao works. In the early 2000s, Diao made a series of works called Perfect Arrangement, paintings exploring the found composition of Philip Johnson’s detailed schematic for positioning the furniture in the Glass House. He showed the works at Tanya Leighton in Berlin in 2008-09, and she brought one of the breakouts to Art Basel in 2015.

a 30 by 40 inch rectangular sheet of cream industrial felt has four squares and one rectangle cut out of it, a composition that mirrors phiip johnson's placement of two chairs, a daybed, a coffee table, and an ottoman on the area rug of his glass house in connecticut. a 2005 artwork by david diao
Perfect Arrangement at 1/4 Scale, 2005, felt, 30 x 40 in., ed. 5, via Tanya Leighton

Perfect Arrangement at 1/4 Scale, 2005, is an edition with the floorplan cut into a 30 x 40 inch sheet of industrial felt. So rather than being a mat, it represents a carpet. And it very much goes on the wall.

Lot 235, 4 Feb 2026: David Diao, Untitled, 1996 [wright20]
David Diao, ‘Best Laid Plans’, Oct 2008-Jan 2009 [tanyaleighton]
Diao installed works at the Glass House during his 2014 retrospective at the Aldrich [theglasshouse.org]

Previously, related: Au Bout de la Nuit, Johnson’s lost Giacometti