Morristown, New Jersey – Now by Could 2, 2021, the Morris Museum will current an exhibition of works by up to date tapestry artist Jon Eric Riis (b. 1945, United States). Energetic for almost six a long time, 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—corresponding to race, faith, struggle, 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 embody massive mythological tapestry panels, Riis’s signature coat and gown archetypal varieties, and experimental anatomical tapestry strips, making this the biggest 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 up to date points and private narratives,” stated Ronald T. Labaco, the Morris Museum’s Chief Curator. “Historically, tapestries and different woven luxurious textiles have 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 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—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 for the reason that early Nineteen Seventies. Relying on the actual tapestry, he might assemble collectively a number of smaller parts 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 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 sturdy 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 at present. “My newer tapestries query the problems coping with the standard of life within the States,” acknowledged Jon Eric Riis. “Particularly within the areas of schooling, racial and spiritual inequalities, and our declining political standing on the planet.”
The Exhibition
The exhibition begins within the Museum’s Pavilion foyer with Riis’s monumental Icarus II (2003). Practically 5-feet excessive and over 14-feet large, 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, type his wings and the golden body. The set up continues within the galleries with Icarus III (2003), over 5-feet excessive by 8-feet large, depicting the character’s fall, mendacity on the blue-silk shore of the Aegean Sea with crystalline waves lapping towards his lifeless type. 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 inventive observe, Riis is a collector and purveyor of vintage costume and textiles that generally function sources for brand new concepts. Again then, as is at present, clothes served as an indicator of 1’s social standing, non secular devotion, or ideological conviction. Riis first conceived his archetypal coat type 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).
Generally Riis treats the coat inside in a different way than the outside in order that—when open—a hidden picture is revealed. Freedom’s Value II Coat (2002) includes a desert camouflage navy uniform sample on the outside, and a blood-red inside with the phrase “Dwelling Candy Dwelling” within the fashion 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 Discipline 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). Wildlife 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 powerful impression on his psyche. Three massive tapestries, over 8 ft large 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 type 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 have 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 large, 8-foot lengthy strips of flayed pores and skin, with the exterior options represented on one facet full with physique hair, and the interior organs on the opposite.
For extra details about this exhibit please go to:
https://morrismuseum.org/events/threads-of-consciousness-the-tapestries-of-jon-eric-riis/
