Textiles

Library Street Collective is pleased to present Inward Cartography: Self of Selves, Basil Kincaid’s debut solo exhibition with the gallery. Known for intricate textile works spanning quilting and embroidery, Kincaid often explores the power of action, intention, and the possibility of radical transformation through a spectrum of works that navigate abstract and narrative modalities.

Look Back At It is Erin M. Riley’s first solo presentation with mother’s tankstation. It is part of Condo London 2025; an innovative, collaborative exhibition bringing together 49 galleries across 22 London spaces. The title Look Back At It is as simple as it is confounding. Look back at what, when, how, why? Here these are crucial, life-changing, questions. Riley’s work sits Janus-like on this boundary line between ‘this’ and ‘that’, primordial aura and contemporary skepticism, timeless and timely. She uses collaged photography, digital images, selfies and photo booth imagery, rendered by hand on the arcane machinery of a loom, in coloration and manner that consciously replicates low resolution digital pixelation. Riley is aware of the involuntary reflex of memory, questioning if it is an attempt…

The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) is pleased to present Soft/Cover, a major exhibition spanning three galleries that will be on view from now through  August 17, 2025. Soft/Cover surveys the many surprising ways artists have used fabric and screenprinting to create objects that relate to the body. Focusing on the connection between textiles, fashion, and architecture, the exhibition includes new and rarely-shown works from The Fabric Workshop and Museum’s collection—each created by Artists-in-Residence in collaboration with FWM’s Studio team.

Years ago, in an interview with Erin M. Riley, she told us “For a long time, I tried to remain respectful, but finally realized that while my work is made on a loom, these pieces are not traditional by any means, and rather than call them tapestries, I have just started describing them by the materials they are made with. I do love talking with the students who are studying textiles currently. They are excited about the work I am making, and I am glad they can see a different way of using materials that have been untapped and underappreciated for so long.” Why this stood out to me, years later, as Riley opened Watering False Flowers in her debut in…

Steve Turner is pleased to present E-scape, a two-person exhibition featuring new paintings by Budapest-based Luca Sára Rózsa and new weavings by Nairobi-based Dickens Otieno. Both artists make works about the environment and humanity’s connection to it. Rózsa uses loose and expressive brush strokes in lustrous color to depict feral humans in nature. Four of her works relate to the elements of fire, water, air and earth while two relate to war and peace. Otieno creates large-scale colorful wall weavings and floor sculptures made of strips of soda cans. Whether depicting a rural or urban scene, he uses aluminum cans to emphasize the impact of humans on the environment. E-scape suggests a new genre of landscape painting, one that conveys the widespread anxiety for…

Erick Medel doesn’t just take pictures, he sews them. Through a unique process involving denim and brightly colored threads, Medel documents through photography his Boyle Heights neighborhood in Los Angeles and finds the most mundane city scenes to then transform into highly detailed works that come from his sewing machine rather than oil paint. On the occasion of his solo show, Vidas, on view at Charlie James Gallery, we talked to Erick about his relationship with his neighborhood as he painstakingly recreates it with thread.

Angela Anh Nguyen is a self-educated textile artist referencing colonial hypocrisy, death metal and a wild array of perspectives. She stays tough while tufting, broaching hardcore topics with  soft materials. Her utilitarian, substantive rug art is imbued with a fierce objective and a dedicated hand. If any artist could be described by the old adage, “kicking ass and taking names,” Angela is the one.

There are  those moments, the ones we literally designate as those where history stops and becomes a chapter. In America, you talk of 9/11, Pearl Harbor, Kennedy and MLK being shot, the night Obama was elected. This past Saturday may have been another, when the media call that Biden had won the electoral college sent seismic waves throughout the world. Those instantaneous moments in history change life in that moment.

It’s a new season here at Radio Juxtapoz, and where we were hoping that Fall would bring back art openings and a sense of normalcy to our already tumultuous year, we are still a bit in flux. This month we released our newest Fall 2020 Quarterly edition with cover artist Bisa Butler, whose phenomenal and critically-acclaimed year has become symbolic of the transitions Americans have experienced in terms of social justice this past summer. The murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and many others have sparked a milestone reckoning and tidal movement of conversation and activism about race, a re-examination of history and what the future can be.

Have you ever seen a picture of Frederick Douglass? I have, too. In most photographs, he is wearing a suit, carrying the weight of injustice in his furrowed brows, with an intensity in the eyes that permeates the photo’s grey glaze.