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

initially revealed: 11/20/2020

(MORRISTOWN, NJ) — Now by Might 2, 2021, the Morris Museum will current an exhibition of works by modern tapestry artist Jon Eric Riis (b. 1945, United States). Lively for almost six a long time, Riis is widely known for his intricately handwoven, representational textiles that strike a steadiness between social commentary and virtuoso craftsmanship. Artwork, historical past, world cultures, and topical points function inspiration to handle provocative topics—corresponding to race, faith, battle, magnificence, spirituality, humanity—by the medium of woven silk and metallic thread. Usually they’re embellished with freshwater pearls, gemstone and gilt glass beads, and crystals. Courting from 2000-2020, the 58 works on view will embody 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 in addition to uphold and talk their privileged standing. They’d interact a outstanding artist to plot the imagery, which might then be executed by expert weavers to precise specs. In contrast, as a up to date artist Riis conceives of the content material, creates the design, and weaves the tapestry totally himself. These works function an extension of his ideas, values, and inside dialogues—the threads of his consciousness—chic in idea and execution.”

Riis weaves each bit on personalized vertical looms, starting from 2 to 10 ft tall, that he has owned for the reason that 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 university pupil within the mid-Sixties on the onset of the fiber arts motion. After educating 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, corresponding 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 true world, celebrating tapestry’s wealthy custom of pictorial narrative. These social and cultural investigations distinguish Riis’s method from different practitioners of this style right now. “My more moderen tapestries query the problems coping with the standard of life within the States,” acknowledged Jon Eric Riis. “Particularly within the areas of training, racial and non secular inequalities, and our declining political standing on the earth.”

The exhibition begins within the Museum’s Pavilion foyer with Riis’s monumental Icarus II (2003). Practically 5-feet excessive and over 14-feet huge, 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 huge, 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 embody 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 creative follow, Riis is a collector and purveyor of vintage costume and textiles that typically function sources for brand new concepts. Again then, as is right now, 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 vital factor of his oeuvre ever since, with 19 coats featured on this exhibition. The earliest, Triad Coat (2002), depicts three photos: the artist’s self-portrait, a second portrait of African-American mannequin Ken Moody based mostly 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 in another way than the outside in order that—when open—a hidden picture is revealed. Freedom’s Worth II Coat (2002) includes a desert camouflage navy uniform sample on the outside, and a blood-red inside with the phrase “Residence Candy Residence” within the type 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 usually visited the Subject Museum of Pure Historical past the place he nurtured his curiosity within the pure world and artifacts from completely different cultures. Feathers, bugs, and amphibians are repeating motifs in his work, as seen in Peacock Coat (2011), Emu Feather Coat (2017), Night time Flight Pearl Coat (2004), Locust (2020), and Frogs and Caviar Pearl Coat (2004). Natural world are the subject material of a number of tapestries impressed by botanical prints and work, with horsehair integrated into the weave to create textural surfaces.

Riis’s religious 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 huge 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 photos 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 presents for Buddhist lama religious leaders. The grinning cranium motif, drawn from photos 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 inside 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 huge, 8-foot lengthy strips of flayed pores and skin, with the exterior options represented on one aspect full with physique hair, and the inner 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 Advantageous Arts from College of the Artwork Institute of Chicago, IL in 1967; his Grasp of Advantageous Arts from Cranbrook Academy of Artwork, Bloomfield Hills, MI in 1969; and a Fulbright Grant to review 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 residence 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 reside efficiency by its modern collection, Stay Arts on the Morris Museum. The Morris Museum has a proud custom of significant academic applications and household occasions. Through the pandemic this summer time, the museum turned its Again Parking Deck into NJ’s liveliest efficiency house, with Jazz, Stay Theater and the acclaimed Lot of Strings Pageant. 1000’s of music lovers skilled world-class musicians just like the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, amongst others, performing  reside, in a novel and safely socially-distant setting.

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 acquired 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 obligation navy personnel and their households, from Memorial Day to Labor Day.