In the last two posts we looked at states of consciousness and unconsciousness and at creativity during the lucid dream stage. Let's move now onto a project that combines all these themes together (while reminding readers that Art Basel Hong Kong started yesterday...) - "Woolgathering" by Kustaa Saksi.
Launching tomorrow at Hong Kong's usagi Gallery, a "lifestyle gallery space" interested in merging international and Japanese culture, this exhibition by Amsterdam-based Finnish award-winning graphic designer and artist features his surreal and unique tapestry artworks.
In the past Saksi developed quite a few pieces that looked at dreams and at that borderland realm between sleep and wakefulness, delusions and illusions. "Woolgathering" refers to absent-mindedness and daydreaming, stages in which we detach ourselves for a relatively brief time from our surroundings, and reality blurs to be substituted by a visionary fantasy and an imagined experience.
The title of the exhibition is also a way for the designer to invite visitors to think about how modern society doesn't seem to allow us to indulge in some genuine daydreaming: many of us do live constantly connected to a digital world, while machines are keeping on replacing human work, killing creativity.Saksi conceives instead daydreaming as a tool to escape from reality and let imagination take over. Produced at the TextielMuseum in Tilburg, an area famous for its heritage in tapestry weaving for centuries, the artpieces included in "Woolgathering" could be considered as abstract multi-sensory landscapes at times inspired by optical art that form combinations of vivid images and colours, creating richly detailed radiant, psychedelic and playful worlds suspended between science and imagination. The tapestries were produced using the jacquard weaving technique.
"Weaving patterns definitely has its limitations compared to printing, but it opens up a completely new world of possibilities, especially in detailing," the artist stated in an official press release.
"In my artworks, I'm using the Jacquard weaving technique for its magnificent control over detailing and colour and material combinations. I'm especially keen on using natural fibres like mohair, alpaca wool, cotton and linen, and contrasting them with synthetic, high-tech materials such as glow-in-the-dark phosphoric and metallic acrylic threads, and rubber. I produce my designs and artworks in small editions to keep them exclusive, at the highest-possible quality."
"Woolgathering" opens a new journey in textile art for Saksi: his previous exhibition "Hypnopompic", travelled across galleries and museums in Helsinki, London, Brussels, New York, Mexico City, Taipei and Madrid (a part of that exhibition is currently shown at Cooper Hewitt Museum's "Beauty" Triennial in New York City), and you can bet that the new pieces will soon be touring the world on their own.
"Woolgathering" by Kustaa Saksi, usagi Gallery Hong Kong, Shop B, G/F, 6-10 Shin Hing Street, Hong Kong, 26th - 17th April 2016. A curated selection of Kustaa Saksi's other works will be available at Lane Crawford Home store (Pacific Place, Hong Kong, until 30th April 2016).
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.