The Morris Museum Presents the Tapestries of Jon Eric Riis –> read it at NewJerseyStage.com

initially revealed: 11/20/2020

(MORRISTOWN, NJ) — Now by Could 2, 2021, the Morris Museum will current an exhibition of works by modern tapestry artist Jon Eric Riis (b. 1945, United States). Energetic for almost six many years, Riis is widely known for his intricately handwoven, representational textiles that strike a stability between social commentary and virtuoso craftsmanship. Artwork, historical past, world cultures, and topical points function inspiration to handle provocative topics—similar to race, faith, warfare, magnificence, spirituality, humanity—by the medium of woven silk and metallic thread. Typically they’re embellished with freshwater pearls, gemstone and gilt glass beads, and crystals. Courting from 2000-2020, the 58 works on view will embrace giant mythological tapestry panels, Riis’s signature coat and gown archetypal kinds, and experimental anatomical tapestry strips, making this the most important presentation of the artist’s work within the U.S. and his first solo museum exhibition within the Northeast.

“Jon Eric Riis turns the age-old artwork of tapestry on its head, bringing it into the current by exploring modern points and private narratives,” stated Ronald T. Labaco, the Morris Museum’s Chief Curator. “Historically, tapestries and different woven luxurious textiles had been commissioned by the rich and highly effective, not solely as magnificent artistic endeavors but additionally to uphold and talk their privileged standing. They’d have interaction a distinguished artist to plan the imagery, which might then be executed by expert weavers to actual specs. In contrast, as a recent artist Riis conceives of the content material, creates the design, and weaves the tapestry fully himself. These works function an extension of his ideas, values, and inner dialogues—the threads of his consciousness—elegant in idea and execution.”

Riis weaves every bit on custom-made vertical looms, starting from 2 to 10 ft tall, that he has owned because the early Nineteen Seventies. Relying on the actual tapestry, he might assemble collectively a number of smaller components to create a bigger composition. Riis first gained recognition for his woven work as a school pupil within the mid-Nineteen Sixties on the onset of the fiber arts motion. After instructing on the College of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, he accepted a place as head of the Crafts program at Georgia State College in Atlanta, the place he established his studio. Early success got here from commissions for public areas by modernist inside designers and designers from the southeast, similar to John C. Portman, Jr., who favored abstractionist weavings. Within the early Nineteen Nineties Riis made a decisive break from abstraction and transitioned to figurative imagery with robust visible references to the actual world, celebrating tapestry’s wealthy custom of pictorial narrative. These social and cultural investigations distinguish Riis’s strategy from different practitioners of this style as we speak. “My newer tapestries query the problems coping with the standard of life within the States,” said Jon Eric Riis. “Particularly within the areas of training, racial and non secular inequalities, and our declining political standing on this planet.”

The exhibition begins within the Museum’s Pavilion foyer with Riis’s monumental Icarus II (2003). Almost 5-feet excessive and over 14-feet broad, the tapestry portrays a double-portrait of the tragic character Icarus, from Greek mythology, within the heavens towards a floor of blue silk. Golden feathers, every individually woven from metallic threads and utilized by hand, kind his wings and the golden body. The set up continues within the galleries with Icarus III (2003), over 5-feet excessive by 8-feet broad, depicting the character’s fall, mendacity on the blue-silk shore of the Aegean Sea with crystalline waves lapping towards his lifeless kind. Different works impressed by antiquity embrace fanciful interpretations of classical and neoclassical figurative sculpture encountered by Riis throughout his travels. Sculptor Antonio Canova’s early Nineteenth-century white marble idealization of male magnificence, Paris, is rendered in woven silk and metallic thread as Golden Boy (2000) with a chest tattoo and golden physique hair.

Along with his inventive follow, Riis is a collector and purveyor of vintage costume and textiles that generally function sources for brand new concepts. Again then, as is as we speak, clothes served as an indicator of 1’s social standing, spiritual devotion, or ideological conviction. Riis first conceived his archetypal coat kind in 2002 and it has remained an necessary factor of his oeuvre ever since, with 19 coats featured on this exhibition. The earliest, Triad Coat (2002), depicts three pictures: the artist’s self-portrait, a second portrait of African-American mannequin Ken Moody primarily based on the enduring {photograph} by Robert Mapplethorpe, and a 3rd hybrid portrait that mixes the bodily facial traits of the 2. Riis explores this meditation on racial similarities and variations once more in his five-panel work Black to White (2006).

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Typically Riis treats the coat inside otherwise than the outside in order that—when open—a hidden picture is revealed. Freedom’s Value II Coat (2002) contains a desert camouflage navy uniform sample on the outside, and a blood-red inside with the phrase “Dwelling Candy Dwelling” within the model of an vintage American cross-stitch sampler. In Ancestors Pearl Coat (2013), the outside depicts an abstracted genetic tree connecting the faces of individuals of various ethnicities, whereas hidden on the inside is a picture of humankind’s evolutionary relative, the chimpanzee, with whom we share 99% of the identical DNA.

Rising up within the Chicago space, Riis typically visited the Area Museum of Pure Historical past the place he nurtured his curiosity within the pure world and artifacts from totally different cultures. Feathers, bugs, and amphibians are repeating motifs in his work, as seen in Peacock Coat (2011), Emu Feather Coat (2017), Evening Flight Pearl Coat (2004), Locust (2020), and Frogs and Caviar Pearl Coat (2004). Wildlife are the subject material of a number of tapestries impressed by botanical prints and work, with horsehair included into the weave to create textural surfaces.

Riis’s non secular investigations are drawn from his travels to Asia and his admiration for non-western societies, with the tradition of Tibet having made a robust impression on his psyche. Three giant tapestries, over 8 ft broad and comprised of overlapping layers of smaller woven panels—Floral Kesa, Tiger Kesa, and Cranium Kesa (all 2008)—are elaborate depictions of the kesa gown kind worn by Buddhist monks and nuns. The tiger motif recurs in 4 Tiger Coats (2007), every depicting stylizations of tiger pictures discovered painted on Tibetan monastery partitions; additionally in a pair of colourful, 7-feet tall Tiger Banners (2006), representing vintage rugs within the type of flayed tiger pelts that had been made as items for Buddhist lama non secular leaders. The grinning cranium motif, drawn from pictures present in Nineteenth-century Tibetan medical illustrations, additionally seems in Dancing Couple Coat (2007) and Multicolored Cranium Pearl Coat (2009).

The exhibition concludes with Riis’s reflections on the materiality of the human physique by a collection of experimental anatomical tapestry strip compositions depicting cross-sections of inner organs, impressed by Nineteenth-century Japanese anatomical medical dolls. Extra of an idea piece, Anatomy Tapes: Blondes, Brunettes, and Redheads (2009) imagines three 2-inch broad, 8-foot lengthy strips of flayed pores and skin, with the exterior options represented on one aspect full with physique hair, and the interior organs on the opposite.

Exhibition Credit

Threads of Consciousness: The Tapestries of Jon Eric Riis is organized by Ronald T. Labaco, Chief Curator; with the help of Sara O’Connor, Preparator; Gillian Suss, Registrar; Michele Marinelli, Curator; Jere Ryder, Guinness Conservator; and Kayla Leiton, former Curatorial Assistant.

About Jon Eric Riis

Born in Park Ridge, Illinois in 1945, Jon Eric Riis is a tapestry artist dwelling and dealing in Atlanta, GA. He earned his Bachelor of High quality Arts from College of the Artwork Institute of Chicago, IL in 1967; his Grasp of High quality Arts from Cranbrook Academy of Artwork, Bloomfield Hills, MI in 1969; and a Fulbright Grant to check at Viswa Bharati College, Santiniketan, West Bengal, India in 1970. Riis’s work has been extensively exhibited in museums and galleries within the U.S., Europe, and Asia. His work is within the everlasting collections of Artwork Institute of Chicago, IL; Cleveland Museum of Artwork, OH; Columbia Museum of Artwork, SC; Excessive Museum of Artwork, Atlanta, GA; Indianapolis Museum of Artwork, IN; Metropolitan Museum of Artwork, New York; Minneapolis Institute of Arts, MN; Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Artwork Museum, Washington, D.C.; Southwest College of Artwork and Craft, San Antonio, TX; Yale College Artwork Gallery, New Haven, CT; and quite a few non-public collections.

Help for this exhibition is offered by the M&T Financial institution.

Based in 1913, the Morris Museum is an award-winning, multifaceted arts and cultural establishment serving the general public by its exhibitions and performances which attempt to interpret the previous and uncover the long run by artwork, sound, and movement. The Museum is house to the historic and internationally-significant Murtogh D. Guinness Assortment of Mechanical Musical Devices and Automata. Altering displays of up to date content material additional illuminate its Everlasting Assortment. The Museum’s Bickford Theatre is a 312-seat performing-arts facility, providing distinctive programming in movie, jazz, and stay efficiency by its progressive collection, Reside Arts on the Morris Museum. The Morris Museum has a proud custom of significant academic applications and household occasions. Through the pandemic this summer season, the museum turned its Again Parking Deck into NJ’s liveliest efficiency area, with Jazz, Reside Theater and the acclaimed Lot of Strings Competition. 1000’s of music lovers skilled world-class musicians just like the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, amongst others, performing  stay, in a novel and safely socially-distant atmosphere.

New Jersey’s solely Smithsonian Affiliate Museum, Morris Museum can also be the primary museum in New Jersey to be accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, it has been designated a Main Arts Establishment and has obtained the New Jersey State Council on the Arts’ Quotation of Excellence, amongst different awards.

The Morris Museum is a Blue Star Museum, providing free admission to energetic responsibility navy personnel and their households, from Memorial Day to Labor Day.