Riding the Weave

Eozen Agopian

Nunzio De Martino

Sam Jaffe

Courtney Puckett

Sue Ravitz

May 27 - June 25, 2023

MARQUEE PROJECTS is thrilled to present Riding the Weave, a group exhibition featuring the works of Eozen Agopian, Nunzio De Martino, Sam Jaffe, Courtney Puckett and Sue Ravitz – all artists currently working in the burgeoning disciplines of textiles as fine art. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, May 27 from 5-7pm.

Textiles have been a fundamental part of human life since the beginning of civilization. Historically, the need and desire for textiles helped catalyze the expansion of international trade routes (through the growth of the Silk Road and, later, during the Age of Exploration), and prompted innovations in technology that drove the Industrial Revolution (the cotton gin, the spinning jenny, and the power loom). The artists in this exhibit push further explorations: those between painting and sculpture, the utilitarian and the decorative, and fine arts versus crafts.

These artists present myriad influences, materials, and processes: collecting and repurposing vintage fabrics while referencing gender and human fallibility; wrapping and bandaging found objects as a kind of personal therapy; morphing traditional, indigenous needlework into free-form abstraction; using fundamental sewing machine skills to create lyrical, painterly gestures on stretched canvas; obsessively knitting soft pieces that allude to paint-by-number kits. Indeed, there is a distinctly obsessive quality to all the artists’ practices, part and parcel of work that’s created slowly – one stitch, one thread, one weave at a time.

And while ostensibly “crafty,” this work continuously riffs on considerable knowledge of art history, calling out Paul Klee, Annie Albers, Cy Twombly, Lenore Tawney, and the Pattern and Decoration movement of the 1970s and 80s, reclaiming homespun, culturally gendered forms.