Rewoven: Innovative Fiber Art - Filmed by Victor Peña

Video taken by CUNY

https://youtu.be/a27JOkmPigA

Rewoven: Innovative Fiber Art Curated by Luchia Meihua Lee Faustino Quintanilla Fangling Tseng Amy Winter Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan March 24 - June 26, 2016 QCC Art Gallery, Queens, New York March 16 - June 17, 2017 Godwin Ternbach Museum, Queens, New York April 6 - May 26, 2017 El Museo de Los Sures, New York April 18 - June 30, 2017 Rewoven: Innovative Fiber Art is a collaboration between the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan, Taiwanese American Arts Council, New York, the Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens Colleege and the QCC Art Gallery / CUNY. The exhibition showcases twenty-four artists whose extraordinary creativity and commitment to nature, environmental, and social issues are addressed in a convergence of painted, woven, netted, sewn, assembled and installed artworks. The conceptual art in this exhibition forms an enchanting dialogue, a reimagining and rediscovery of prosaic materials reborn greater than the sum of their parts. As Wen Fu Yu, one of the artists asserts: "The cloud exists in a quiet state, but youth is passionate". Ordinary objects are transformed, and their mere appearance finds liberation through the progressive process: form over content. Reshaped and valued anew as art, we marvel at their creators’ skills. Encountering these uncomplicated forms, rebalanced and brought into life, the viewer is challenged to inquire, feel and experience revelations - the dreams artist Yang Wei-Lin says are truth. Through the magic of Huang Wen Ying’s ‘Electromagnetics’ the fragility of the human condition is evoked, as well as a metaphysical sense of conflict between heaven, earth and humankind. Brought closer to self-awareness in the presence of these pieces, we sense the impermanence of life, drawing us into nature and its myriad qualities - those that Chuang Hui Lin suggest abandons quotidian pursuit of the mundane and commercial and leads toward nature, originality and a spiritual state of being. An inventory of signs and themes from popular culture is presented in the work of these artists - an unstoppable flow of variants, or rather a succession of classic memes that infuse the spectator in a continuous, transformative flow. Closely studying the objects, we are immersed in a new sensibility, a fresh awareness; look too quickly, and this meaning will be lost. To paraphrase André Breton, true humor reveals itself in a work through the profound initiation of feeling. Art is form, and form is a perpetual metamorphosis, forever undergoing change that evolves dynamic visions of perceived reality. Here are forms with historic and legendary power, forever in conflict, yet without heroes or ideas, here are forces suspended in a magnetically-levitated space above the pull of gravity. To see these works not as exhibits, but as questions to solve, we discover these objects changing rhythmically, vibrating with tension and reinventing their forms. We would like to thank those who have lent their talent to create the exhibit and to those who have offered their devoted commitment to this project. Participating Artists Steven Balogh 史帝芬。巴洛 Ching-Lin Chen 陳景林 Hui-Lin Chuang 莊惠琳 Teresa Huang 黃麗絹 Wen-Ying Huang 黃文英 Yen-Chao Huang 黃彥超 Yu-Chih Huang 黃裕智 Hiroshi Jashiki 謝敷 宏 Ming-Jer Kuo 郭明哲 Catherine Lan 藍巧茹 Eleng Luluan 安聖惠(峨冷) Lulu Meng 孟祥璐 John Ensor Parker 約翰。派克 Sarah Walko 莎拉。娃可 Poyen Wang 王博彥 Wen-Chi Wu 吳汶錡 ChinChih Yang 楊金池 Wei-Lin Yang 王博彥 Wen-Fu Yu 游文富 Filmed by Victor Peña Edited by Victor Peña Music "Healing" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...​ Project Supervisor Phillip Roncoroni QCC Art Gallery Executive Director Faustino Quintanilla QCC Art Gallery Assistant Director Lisa Scandaliato (c) QCC Art Gallery 2017 Website: http://www.qcc.cuny.edu/artgallery/​

Rewoven New York 紐約再織

REWOVEN - New York

by Luchia Meihua Lee

 “Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.”                                                                                                           ---Dorothy Day

The seven artists in Rewoven Part III at El Museo de Los Sures all live and work in New York City. These artists personally watch and experience the direct impact of the political chaos emanating from the authority center; the White House desk has been switched to a golf course. Curator Luchia Meihua Lee said “artists regenerate a parameter of relationship between individual and society, symbolically exposing endless exhausted whirlpools with revels into sarcastic dialogue.” In Rewoven, powerful questions adumbrate crisis; these views expand connectivity and reach globally.

 In ChinChih Yang’s Mathematics of Light, he reflects as curator Lee puts it, on “the current sickness of society” by depicting a chaos of desire, confusion, pollution, and cupidity in the small video under a thicket of shiny metallic ribbons cut from discarded beverage cans. Steven Balogh escaped from communist territory only to find himself behind the barbed wire- topped walls of a concentration camp, and now resides in New York. His piece Peacock in trap reflecting on the political scene, is especially relevant today with a golf aficionado in the White House. Money Windfall with its green hurricanes perhaps refers to the obscene profits on Wall Street that result from mindless paper chases.

 

The womb-like chair made by Catherine Lan is an exotic shelter from the storm; covered with artificial fur, this chair is equipped with flashing neon lights and with the recorded sounds of a baby. This fake shelter has been placed in the front porch of the Museo de Los Sures gallery space, in contrast with a background of old peering paint mural of two Los Sures heroes. Williamsburg, like many artist areas, has been attractive to developers, and Los Sures has been fighting the unwanted effects of gentrification there. Mingjer Kuo’s Suburban Form from reviews the over developed land transformed into beautiful shining plastic chips, and originates with an aerial view of the repeating shape of suburban housing. A symbolic mapping of urban public transportation is shown in Atlas by Poyen Wang, where he makes unnatural abstract landscape from subway advertisements. Lulu Meng’s Model discusses the relationship of self to society. Her other wall installation is an artist diary which directly illustrates life as an artist in NYC, fighting for survival and to express her dream. Taking matters to a global level, Hiroshi Jashiki powerfully suggests a melting iceberg indicative of a dangerous water crisis facing NYC and the world.

New York artists for Rewoven- part III were selected by curator Luchia Meihua Lee. Their works naturally formulate laws to redefine and reshape “fiber art” ideas, practice, and content. With different contents at each of its three venues.

 再織-紐約

「我們的問題來自於我們接受這個骯髒的﹑腐爛的系統」。-- 多蘿茜.迪 

這七位藝術家都居住在紐約市，以自己在美國的社會體驗與觀察中，試圖找出個人與社會之間的平衡關係, 在他們的作品看到了政治權力中心所暴露出的混亂與現實﹑疲憊無止盡的金錢漩渦﹑到過度的房地產操作﹑還有被忽略的環境污染地球暖化的危機，這些紐約展出的作品表現觀點事實上也是全球災難的縮影，而這些諷刺的對話與也將尋求回歸到子宮般的庇護所中恢復與蘇醒。

藝術家史蒂文·巴洛克（Steven Balogh）從共產主義領土逃脫到了美國，發現自己還只能在集中營的鐵絲網牆壁後面掙扎；他的作品「孔雀陷阱」反映政治舞台的游戲，當白宮談判桌已經轉向高爾夫球場之際，高爾夫球杆被藝術家隨意擺置有如美麗的孔雀毛被陷在牢籠中；還有如龍捲風漩渦的綠色繁複綫條的繪畫作品主題爲「金錢風暴」，指向了華爾街的貪婪利益凸顯無意識的紙張追逐。

 

在楊金池的「數學光」作品，通過飲料罐剪出的閃亮金屬絲帶下的小視頻中描繪了「現在的社會病態」，包括了快速轉換的恐怖﹑暴力﹑戰爭﹑慾望﹑淫穢﹑污染和諷刺混亂的影像交錯；

藍巧茹子宮般的座椅「庇護所」是一座充滿風情的避風港，她用人造毛皮包住了這把椅子並圍繞著閃閃發光的霓虹燈，背景加上嬰兒的聲音與放鬆的音樂；這個假的「庇護所」被放置在Los Sures畫廊空間的狹窄前院中，對照著Los Sure創始人斑駁掉落的油漆壁畫背景；像許多藝術家開啓商機然後被趕出的地區一樣，威廉斯堡的波西米氣質一直對房地產開發商具有莫大吸引力，而HDFC-Los Sures這個機構一直在威廉斯堡奮戰區域的高檔化。郭明哲的「郊區形式」，從美麗的閃亮塑料芯片上觀看過度發展的土地轉型，以及重複的社區房屋形狀的空鳥瞰景觀。

另一件錄像作品看起來像是像個抽象的自然景觀緩慢不被察覺的的移動著，Atlas這個圖像是由王博彥取自紐約地鐵，再加以轉化表現出來似地球或是外星球表層的一種不自然的地理景緻。此外，Jashiki Hiroshi謝敷 宏的「水」在看似冰山融解潮流動在優雅的布面水紋中蘊釀著强勁的大瀑布墜落來臨，或是海嘯危機的接近感。孟祥璐的「模特兒」在社會制約與個人之間穿透一種尷尬的流動關係，她的另一個牆壁安裝作品，用綫條拉出的藝術家的日記，鏈接了網路的虛擬世界，直接標示了藝術家在城市的戰鬥生活，每日在工作室和其他各類型的兼職工作環境倖存的逐夢中逐夢。

布魯克林的南威廉斯堡美術館(El Museo De Los Sures，Williamsburg，Brooklyn.)是由以追求住房公平公義爲訴求的機構HDFC-Los Sures，所設立的社區小型藝術場地。

地點：EL Museo de Los Sures,

Opening reception: Thursday April 20, 6-8pm

April 20 - June 30, 2017

參展藝術家Artists : Steven Balogh 史蒂芬.巴洛, Hiroshi Jashiki 謝敷 宏, Ming Jer Kuo 郭明哲, Catherine Lan藍巧茹, Lulu Meng 孟祥璐, Poyen Wang 王博彥, Chin Chih YANG 楊金池.

Event Register

Light Year 24: Passenger Moments

Dumbo Is: Dumbo.is/hosting/light-year-24/

Queens Times: Queens Times article-Video Exhibition on the Manhattan Bridge Anchorage

World Journal: World Journal- New York and Berlin

Ming Pao daily: Ming Pao Daily- Manhattan Bridge Public Art

DW News: DW News-Light Year 24: Passenger Moments

My Brooklyn Calendar: my brooklyn calendar

Art In Dumbo: Art in Dumbo

Light Year24

Passenger Moments

Curator: Luchia Meihua Lee

The April 2017 version of the New York Festival of Light is entitled Passenger Moment, a title which designates reacting to a system of thought that is based on life. As humans, we are confronted with a transitory existence that is relative to the world when we arrived. Included in this exhibit are five artists who use their personal experiences in life to expand the relationship between themselves and their subjects, and furthermore to express their concerns about the surroundings. This presentation is not to celebrate the beauty of nature or to praise the charming, romantic and magnificent. Instead of that, we investigate self and society.  Poyen Wang in A Fabricated Personal History took faces of stranger children and transferred them to familiar yet alien faces. In doing so, he addresses the assimilation period to the new land or the new world. All various color skins are also present in this multi-cultural city and in the Skin Deep project sketched by Rosalie Yu and Alon Chitayat, where a wide variety of human faces appear in the running video that been painted in different colors. The dripping lines and colors show its spontaneous drawing texture and a cold, lifeless face as urban residents pass by. After learning the various languages, the letters and venues in another way turn to familiar or unfamiliar ways to connect people universally, as decoded by Meng Chih Chiang’s A Stranger to Words that intertwines lines and mingles them with letters. The turning shape takes the viewer to an illuminated and illusionary world. In our materials world, we take pride in rapid high-tech development, ignoring the harmful effect on the environment and our very lives. Overused consumer goods turn to be undecomposed chemical elements that fly around in Jeremiah Teipen’s Ice Cubes Melting in a Plastic Cup. Also, the 30,000 beverage cans – the number used by the average American in a lifetime - that drop onto Chinchih Yang’s head in Kill Me or Change remind us of the astonishing quantities of waste that we have created and that are so deleterious to the earth, the planet which we only recently have come to see as fragile. This view project in this light year is without doctrine, but a beautiful, creative, abstract image that indicates us as strangers to this world.

Participating Artists and video titles (alphabetical by last name)

• ·        Meng Chih Chiang: A Stranger to Words
• ·        Jeremiah Teipen: Ice Cubes Melting in a Plastic Cup
• ·        Poyen Wang: A Fabricated Personal History
• ·        Chinchih Yang: Kill Me or Change
• ·        Rosalie Yu and Alon Chitayat: Skin Deep

Meng Chih Chiang

A Stranger to Words, 2013-2017

HD projection, with color and sound, running time 4 minutes 51 seconds

Technical support: Yu-Cheng Lin, Alice Chen, Vick Hsieh Score. Composer: Tzu-Ho Lin

A Stranger to Words is a video based on a network graph created by Meng Chih Chiang to visualize her personal learning experience. Based on her daily reading report, a personal database of 23,358 words was created to express how she understood words. The complicated graph evolves a great diversity of transformations, creating a mesmerizing visual experience in which language and the line of connection work in unison. Its goal is to reveal a connecting system of underlying text algorithm in a novel and insightful way and to unfold personal sentiments through the capabilities of data visualization. As an English dyslexic, Meng Chih Chiang explores the relationship between language and people with language-based learning disabilities. By recording thousands of daily words for about one year, Chiang built a huge individual data set to make invisible reading progress visible and to reveal the novel perspectives of learning a second language in the experimental interface. Through this process Chiang realized that a tedious learning experience can become a source of inspiration. She wishes to transform the suffering of depression and frustration into a fantastic and imaginative production.  http://www.astrangertowords.com/

Meng Chih Chiang is a Taiwanese digital designer, data artist, and writer based in New York. Chiang was born in Pingtung, Taiwan, and earned her BFA in Visual Communication Design at National Taiwan Normal University. Upon graduating, Chiang was hired as a web designer at Medialand, one of the top digital design agencies in Taiwan. In 2013 she graduated from School of Visual Arts in New York and earned the Paula Rhodes Memorial Award for exceptional achievement in Computer Art. At the School of Visual Arts, Chiang concentrated on interactive art of interfaces, infographics, programming, and internet. Chiang’s artwork A Stranger to Words has won the Red Dot Award, Macao Design Biennial Award, The Lumen Prize, Adobe Design Achievement Award, and Google Chrome Experiments, and has been featured in exhibitions worldwide. Chiang continues her career as a creative designer and an interactive designer at American Express and Hi-Res! in New York. Meanwhile, she founded Mengdom Experimental Design Lab to keep exploring big data and new technologies in arts.

Jeremiah Teipen

Ice Cubes Melting in a Plastic Cup, 2015

HD video projection, color with sound, running time 5 minutes

http://www.teipen.com/jeremiah/

Ingesting information that is both highly compacted and immediate is fundamentally changing our perception. Our increased and accelerated access to information, which has alleviated the pain and boredom of the process of searching and gathering, has been replaced with a new distress, that of dealing with such a large amount of data and analyzing its quality. For this we develop new tools and technology that have such high organizational power that they pose a potential danger to eliminate the accidental and serendipitous. However, consuming information at high speed and from multiple points-of-view simultaneously allows us to perceive interconnectedness of diverse media and form creative misinterpretations (mutations) of singular elements as well as their interrelationships. By doing so, one can form new concepts that transcend the current limitations of the physical/virtual paradigm. The intersection of these concepts and spaces form a nexus that is the subject of much of Teipen’s work.

Born in Bloomington, Indiana, Jeremiah Teipen currently lives and works in Brooklyn. Teipen received an MFA from the School of Visual Arts and a BFA from Columbus College of Art & Design, has been the recipient of several awards including grants from the Asian Cultural Council, SIGGRAPH, Seoul Foundation of Arts & Culture and Arts Council Korea. He has exhibited his work in numerous exhibitions in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Poyen Wang

 A Fabricated Personal History, 2017

Computer animation, color with sound, 2k, running time 4 minutes

In Poyen Wang’s project, A Fabricated Personal History, he examines the issues of identity and image authenticity in relation to digital technology by presenting a documentation of fake childhoods.

Wang collected footage of American home movies found on YouTube and recorded in the 1960s and 1970s and screen grabbed certain snapshot moments from these movies when the child in the video looks at the camera. Then he replaced the child’s face with his own at a similar age from family photos taken in Taiwan. The video borrows from algorithmic presentations like those employed by social media, replacing lived experiences with fabricated memories.

This series of manipulated childhood photos constructs an extensive personal archive, derived from collective memories circulated on the Internet. This questions our conceptions of reality and illustrates a digitization of identity. The uncanny atmosphere of the project's imagery suggests a sense of cultural rupture resulting from pressures to conform to American culture.

Born in 1987 in Taichung, Taiwan and based in New York, Poyen Wang is a conceptual media artist interested in experimental animation and video art. He focuses on time-based media that incorporate immersive installation with computer animation, using both still and moving images. His work has been shown at museums, galleries and film festivals nationally and internationally. Wang has a background in Graphic Design, received an MFA in New Media Art from Taipei National University of the Fine Arts in Taiwan, and is currently pursuing a second MFA in Computer Art through the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Chin Chih Yang

Kill Me or Change, 2012-1016

HD projection, color with sound, running time 5 minutes

Presented at the Queens Museum of Art New York 2012 & Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei 2016

In Chin Chih Yang’s interactive performance art piece Kill Me Or Change, 30,000 aluminum cans—the average number of cans one person throws away over a lifetime—are contained in a mesh net suspended 30 feet above the ground from a crane. As the finale to each performance, the contents of the net are released onto Yang’s head, in a colorful and overwhelming display of aluminum waste. By showing, quite literally, the suffocating effects of one person’s personal polluting, Yang hopes this piece will serve as a call to action, and that audience members and the public at large will examine their habits of personal consumption. 

Yang was born in Taiwan, and has resided for many years in New York City, where he studied at Pratt Institute and Parsons School of Design. He has received many fellowships; the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council has granted him a Swing Space residency at Governors Island. Yang’s interests in ecology and constructed environments have resulted in interactive performances and installations in the United States, Poland, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong. His work incorporates the rhythms and discords of human society, correlating them with materials discarded by industrialized society. Finding the modern world both disturbing and entrancing, he aims to capture the complex state of anxiety and compulsive fascination specific to the contemplation of contemporary social problems. His performances often dramatize the divided quality of the self, and he uses video projections to create a discordant ambience.

Rosalie Yu & Alon Chitayat

Skin Deep, 2015

HD projection, body scanning, hand drawn textures, running time 5 minutes

Music by Aaron Arntz, T.K. Broderick, and Justin Peak

https://vimeo.com/114555862

Skin Deep is a series of collaborative self-portraits for which the body is treated as a canvas for 3D drawing. It is an exploration of a new kind of drawing format where the artists are 3D-scanned to produce a mesh of their bodies and texture maps of their skin from all angles. Skin Deep explores the core value of one’s self after peeling away layers of consciousness to reveal vulnerability, and how this transformation provides a new way of seeing.

Rosalie Yu is a visual designer, creative coder and maker. Her work draws inspiration from the fields of cognitive science, storytelling, art, and technology, and spans multiple artistic platforms including interactive installation, live performance and conceptual art.  She strives to incorporate narratives in her art in order to explore the connection of emerging 3D technologies to our daily lives and to bridge human and machine intelligence. Yu graduated from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.  She holds a BA in psychology and film from UCLA.

Alon Chitayat (Israel – US) is a digital artist and founder of Animishmish Creative Studio , which explores the intersection of video and interactivity. His artistic work has been exhibited at international venues, including ARS Electronica Festival (2010), Siggraph Festival (2011). Chitayat graduated from the Interactive Telecommunications Program, NYU. His research concentrates on the study of drawing as a means for interaction.

Whirl With Merle 02/22 by mexit | Travel Podcasts

Whirl With Merle 02/22 by mexit | Travel Podcasts:  Artist Poyen Wang Radio Interview

Rewoven exhibition will be held at QCC Art Gallery/CUNY 
 opening reception:March 30, 2017 5-8pm

Pieced together from fabric-like plaster components, the white bust of Poyen Wang's Construction of intimacy signifies his healing or acclimating to a new environment. For this piece, he smashed a 3D print sculpture to fragments then gradually sewed it back together to form a complete face. His work is less open to the outside world but more personal and profoundly investigates the self. Theatrically projecting light onto a resewn face casts up an iconographic great man, and alludes to a fake or self-content social situation. In the brave new land, fragility morphs into apparent dominance. A formidable stitch fabric book Atlas demonstrates both technique and manual expertise. The prototype of a landscape was captured from a painted wall in the New York City subway. Processing these images, he stitched together the fabric book by assembling digital pigment prints on silk fabric. These urban and nature landscape application to an unaware delaying motion video piece. The projection where the artist intended to project the contraction with the rush crowd nowadays we experience in the urban and his preferences.

 Poyen Wang, Construct Intimacy, 2016. 3D-Printing Digital Sculpture (Plaster, Threads, glue) Life Size (around 24 x 13 x 15.5 inch) Courtesy of the artist. 

Color of 2017 年度色彩

Color of 2017

" We know what kind of world we are living in: one that is very stressful and very tense," said Leatrice Eiseman, the executive director of the Pantone Color Institute. " This is the color of hopefulness, and of our connection to nature, it speaks to what we call the 're' words; regenerate, refresh, revitalize,renew. Everything spring we enter anew cycle and new shoots come from the ground. It is something life affirming to look forward to."
----New York times December 8, 2016 by Vanessa Friedman

“我們知道自己生活在什麼樣的世界裡：一個充滿壓力和緊張感的世界，”潘通色彩研究所的執行總監萊亞特麗斯·艾斯曼(Leatrice Eiseman)說。 “這種顏色代表著希望，以及我們和自然的關聯。它代表著我們平常所說的以're'（一再，重新）為詞根的詞：regenerate（再生），refresh（煥然一新），revitalize（重振），renew（更新）。每逢春天，我們都會進入一個新循環，新芽都會從泥土中冒出。它是某種令人期待的使人向上的東西。”
“我们知道自己生活在什么样的世界里：一个充满压力和紧张感的世界，”潘通色彩研究所的执行总监莱亚特丽斯·艾斯曼(Leatrice Eiseman)说。“这种颜色代表着希望，以及我们和自然的关联。它代表着我们平常所说的以‘re’（一再，重新）为词根的词：regenerate（再生），refresh（焕然一新），revitalize（重振），renew（更新）。每逢春天，我们都会进入一个新循环，新芽都会从泥土中冒出。它是某种令人期待的使人向上的东西。”

-- 紐約時報 12月8日 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/08/fashion/color-of-the-year-2017-pantone-greenery.html

New York Rewoven

New York Rewoven

Luchia Meihua Lee

Hans Hofmann remarked in On the Aims of Art that “every medium of expression has its own laws; founded on these laws it can be made to resonate and vibrate when stimulated by the impulses coming directly from the natural world.”[1] New York artists selected for Rewoven naturally display extreme creativity in intuiting and formulating laws to redefine and reshape “fiber art” ideas, practice, and content. In pursuit of a radical agenda, compelling voices reexamine innovation, social justice, and ingenuity in art history in a new context. Parsing our theme, isolate from “rewoven” the term “re-” to emphasize its meaning of “regenerate.” Clues[2] provided a hint which Rewoven has developed. While New York artists prosecute a provocative reweaving, more profound than intimated by the prefix. This exhibit celebrates concept and relentlessly questions and confronts the requisites of "Fiber Art." While weaving itself indicates an element of reversion and repetition, it has been ready to absorb the practical implication of the new critical regime with no delay.  Works here depart from a straight line to seek a new form and awareness, to more actively rebuild, furthermore to renew a value judgment. And these ineluctably update our contemporary conception world. By no means, has weaving been politically correct.[3]

Fig. 1 Mingjer Kuo, Suburban Housing, NJ.US.,
2012. Pigment print on drawing paper; 18 x 24 in. 

Private collection.

Art in the past two centuries is a direct consequence of the separation between society and real life. Yet in reimagining fiber art from craftsmanship to a new relevance and placing it beside new media in the forefront of the development of art. Ming-Jer Kuo has straddled this gap.  Kuo’s series Suburban Form apparently is manual and industrial, but upon closer inspection reveals an astonishing organic character. He challenges and expands the parameters of weaving by interlacing dried twigs and clear plastic(Fig. 1) he takes as his point of departure real estate maps, but he proceeds to lyrical and abstract forms. In fact, he produces a diagram of typography of Earth in a whirlpool caught in a spider’s web. In other work, he uses aerial views of repeating construction patterns to rethink and review the over developed land.

ips which subtly reflect the metallic shining in an installation. In the two-dimensional pieces,

       In the history of craftsmanship, fiber art reached its zenith in the traditional manual mode. The weaving of strand, fabric, and textiles accompanied everywhere in the world the development of human life and civilization. Insofar as it was pictorial, realism of the land and humankind were valued. Fabric intertwines an infinite possibility within a simple latitude and longitude to form a universe, but traditional weaving did not often explore these potentialities. Going beyond conventional methods, Chin Chih Yang uses weaving to discuss the harm we do to our earth. Using recycling materials, for 123 Pollution Solution in this exhibition, he chooses cans with shiny metal and dramatic labels or brand names, cutting and reworking them into a big blanket, and then twisting them to fit his message. And in a more direct piece, Mathematics of Light, thin, silky metal threads cut from cans are formed into a thicket equipped with flashing LED lights and join a small video that depicts factory chimneys polluting with endless exhaust. In Yang's oeuvre, he deals with the environment, social justice on Wall Street, religion, and natural disasters. Whether he uses beverage cans, manikins, video, or unexpected lighting, his art always addresses issues of current concern.

To be in harmony with the environment, artists like Hiroshi Jashiki blend emotional and intellectual effort to reach greatest simplicity, sharing some methods with artisans illustrating scenes from daily folk and personal experience. Magnificent artistic works are often produced. They result from facets of reality, the enthusiasm of the romantic, and some are strong fantasies depicting linear nature with a charming rhythm. Jashiki has been working in textile design; so naturally, he takes fabric as material for his work and experiments with color by way of textile software, creating both realistic and highly abstract motifs to create a romantic feeling. In paintings, curtains, triptychs, and screens, Jashiki is influenced both by Japanese Okinawan handweaving and modern digital textile design methods. Nice South France 03,

Fig2. Hiroshi Jashiki, Nice South France 03, 2015
70 x120 in. 

a six-panel folding silk screen, (fig. 2)is another sample of his fabric work taking inspiration from nature; the artist reveals the azure mysteriousness of the ever-changing ocean. The waterscape can be viewed from both sides of the mounted silk, light passing through the transparent screen bringing out a rigorous and impulsive feature. Diderot championed a reconciliation of reason with feeling so as to establish harmony, insisting that discipline is also essential to creating sublime work.[4]

       To deal with fabric in joining the conceptual with the interactive, Lulu Meng has created an intimate piece Threshold in which cloth forms three dripping gates through which people may walk. The artist thus discusses a way to interpret the relationship between body and fabric The harsh metal stainless steel and sterling silver wire in "Model" is suggestive of a corset straining a fetish in space, and gives an ambiguous clue.  In "Parts of a Whole," (Fig. 3)

Fig3. Lulu Meng, Parts of a Whole, 2015. 

Acrylic, fabric, threads, wood, clear film and lighting box; 

9 x 6 x 6 feet. 

made in 2015, she deftly uses fabric as a medium to address the weaving of individuals into the larger whole that is society. Her square, cloth lightbox hanging from the ceiling demands both appreciation from a distance as well as close scrutiny. It adumbrates the concern that runs through many of her works – the relationship between the individual and society.

     Pieced together from fabric-like plaster components, the white

bust of Poyen Wang’s Construction of intimacy signifies his healing or acclimating to a new environment. For this piece, he smashed a 3D print sculpture to fragments then gradually sewed it back together to form a complete face. His work is less open to the outside world but more personal and profoundly investigates the self. Theatrically projecting light onto a resewn face casts up an iconographic great man, and alludes to a fake or self-content social situation. In the brave new land, fragility morphs into apparent dominance.  A formidable stitch fabric book Atlas demonstrates both technique and manual expertise. The prototype of a landscape was captured from a painted wall in the New York City subway. Processing these images, he stitched together the fabric book by assembling digital pigment prints on silk fabric.  These urban and nature landscape application to an unaware delaying motion video piece. The projection where the artist intended to project the contraction with the rush crowd nowadays we experience in the urban and his preferences.

Fig. 4 Catherine Lan,  Rest Inside Me, 2017

       In another example of highly sophisticated conceptual fiber art, Catherine Lan has confronted the artificial and the intimate. She uses synthetic fur to transmit feelings at once organic, feminist, as well as exotic, in her series of "relief paintings" accomplished by cutting fur to form new topographies of forests, mountains, and even streams.  As the viewer changes position or strikes the cut faux-fur, so too the fabric alters color and texture, resulting in interactive scenery. In another installation piece, Rest Inside Me, Lan creates a fetishistic, exotic phenomenon – a hanging chair, covered with faux fur. The artificial fur, the cradle-like chair, the festive lighting, and the enveloping music all give shelter and reference the womb. Or from a different perspective, the work speaks to the need to break away from the hectic importunities of quotidian life, to deny imposed societal values, and take the time to rest and to focus on personal balance. (fig.4)

Awareness of the essence of life is difficult. For Steven Balogh, memory is barbed wire, looped around and around, layer on layer, and surmounting a high wall to recall a refugee camp. By contrast, his Money Windfall in its strict two-dimensionality, and as in Hoffman’s Aim of Art, “swings and resounds to the rhythm of color” in “achiev[ing] a three-dimensional effect by means of the creative process.”[5] The strokes drip color and form to then function symbolically, and the literary or journalistic consideration has been abandoned. Fiber to Balogh brings art to hard metal as in Peacock in a Trap where he arranges golf clubs in a cage-like structure, with the heads of the golf clubs signifying peacock feathers. Playing on golf’s sand trap, he entangles his notional peacock in an endless cycle, wire, line or metal web, the increasingly restrictive web imposed on him by the pressures of the outer world.

A restructuring process to a new form, constructs and might not destruct. The reweavings we take reflect a new perspective on making from traditional methods, new imagination leading to an unpredictable result. In this exhibition, fiber art elides into a subtitle, thereby, seemingly into a line, thread, fabric, or something else.

     Sarah Walko’s delicate installation looks beyond traditional weaving materials and physical constraints to ideological and conceptual possibilities. Her works address questions related to science, ritual, land, urban areas, and the surroundings. Walko’s reconstructed test tubes sometimes are wrapped together as sacrificial objects, or displayed along with small objects.  She carefully arranges various sized materials then crosses air and space tightening thin threads to frame an astrologic and philosophical structure that transmits sublime and mystical notions of the universe. Glass Orchestra entails a constellation of test tubes united by fanciful trails of fabric. This Glass Orchestra installation is a performance. It exposes an exquisite beauty that reveals a quiet melody to us and those within the glass test tubes.

       With a scientific and mechanical background, John Ensor Parker has conceived a science-based video entitled Multiverse that encapsulates formulae from Einstein’s theory, numbers which form and reform, dissolving into a series of words, and lines which merge into a surface. The digits, numbers, letters fly from a glowing sphere. His mapping pieces on buildings impose upon their targets light, motion, and another dimension. In this Multiverse, a time-space grid crosses the entire world both spiritual and virtual, drawing on both literature and science. Mirroring the entwining of images on the visual level, the light beams themselves are arrays of chains of photons. And LCDs, used ubiquitously in computer monitors, depend on a tapestry of pixels and the warp and woof of polarizing filters. (Fig.5)

Fig5. John Ensor Parker, Multiverse, 2016

        We build up a net that is destabilizing and transformative for ourselves and outside people. These artists reweave a world of creativity to reflect their surroundings. No matter whether this presentation is philosophical, minimal, literary, conceptual, abstract, or commentary on beauty or on the grotesque; the concept of fiber art in New York section has exceeded the capacities for a conventional control and rational comprehension. Equipped with a changing global point of view, especially in view of our expanded connectivity and reach globally, we chafe at the restrictions sometimes enforced. 

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[1] 3. Hans Hofmann On the Aims of Art. IVA The Modern as Ideal, Ed. Charles Harrison & Paul Wood, eds. Art in Theory 1900-2000-An anthology of changing ideas.  Blackwell publishing 2002 p. 371.

[2]The Clues exhibition was held at Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts March 26 to June 26, 2016, and included 24 Taiwanese artists. The Taiwanese American Arts Council (TAAC) arranged a cultural visit to Kaohsiung for some guests from New York Cultural and Art organizations, and they had the opportunity to view the exhibition.

[3] In 2001 when Alexander McQueen was in Paris for his debut a few days after Sep 11, he was unapologetic for his smoke-screens and pornographic creation. He refused to make any change. “There is no link between the two things as far as I can see. Fashion should never be politically correct. Otherwise it wouldn’t be revolutionary. I just did what I always do.” Susannah Frankel, introduction, Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty. The Metropolitan Museum of Art 2011 p.22.

[4] Will Durant (1965). The Story of Civilization Volume 9: The Age of Voltaire Simon & Schuster p. 626

[5]Hans Hofmann ‘On The Aims of Art.’ IVA The Modern as Ideal, Ed. Charles Harrison & Paul Wood, eds. Art in Theory 1900-2000-An anthology of changing ideas.  Blackwell publishing 2002 p. 372, 373.