When you look at a work of art by Antonio Santin, you may think at first that you are looking at an intricate hand-woven rug. However, Santin is not a rug-maker but a painter. For each of his oil paintings of rugs, he uses thousands of brushstrokes to accurately recreate every detail of the original’s fabric and patterns. It is not the detailed painting of the rugs themselves that make Santin’s paintings so arresting yet so unsettling, though. It is what appears to lie beneath.
In the past, creating a carpet was a painstaking and exceedingly slow process. Some of the masterpieces that we have today took teams of weavers years to create. They have a quality that allows them to last for centuries if they are properly taken care of and preserved. Now, you can find thousands of mass-produced carpets at exceptionally cheap prices. However, something is missing. A hand-knotted rug was carefully crafted by the artisan. They poured their heart and soul into its creation. This is something that a machine made carpet can never reproduce, and the message that We Make Carpets wants to say to the world.
Rudolf Stingel is an artist who challenges conventional ideas of the creative process. His art works explore the relationship of art and space. Stingel uses different modern mediums in a way that creates an interaction with the space of the exhibit. In one of his most famous works, he used pieces inspired by 17th and 16th century Transylvanian rugs to cover the Palazzo Grassi. This 2013 exhibition was an imaginative use of carpets as a medium, but if we look beyond the surface, we might be able to gain insights into antique rugs as a medium of self-expression that applies today.
In this post we explore the theory that the vintage Moroccan rugs inspired some of the greatest most iconic mid century artists such as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell and Joseph Albers.
The world of artist Debbie Lawson is one of color and an exploration of the imagination. Her exhibition work takes the viewer on a journey through the cultural traditions surrounding objects in our everyday lives. Her artwork takes the familiar and transforms it into something unexpected. Her art is meant to evoke emotion in the viewer and take them to their inner spaces while merging a two-dimensional world with a three-dimensional one.
The late contemporary artist Martin Roth created works of art that explore the temporal nature of organic structures and the material world. In a textile art project that began in 2012, Roth planted grass seeds and allowed them to grow through the fabric of Persian carpets. The work was exhibited at an Austrian castle in 2012.
The ocean landscapes of environmental activist and textile artist Vanessa Barragao use a variety of different fiber art techniques to bring attention to the desperate need to save our ocean resources. Barragao’s fiber sculptures bring the viewer up close and allow them to interact with an underwater world of beauty that is quickly disappearing due to natural and man-made forces. Vanessa’s textile sculptures are three-dimensional and life-sized, creating an immersive experience.
Babak Kazemi uses the medium of photography to recount ancient tales that inspire and that are thought-provoking. Using Persian carpets as the backdrop, Persian artist Babak Kazemi recounts the tragic and ancient tale of Shirin and Farhad through photographs. Using beautiful Persian carpets to set the scene, Kazemi pays homage to the ancient traditions but gives them a contemporary twist.
The art of paper quilling is believed to have begun in the 15th century. It was created by French and Italian nuns to decorate special religious objects. Lisa Nilsson is a contemporary artist who takes this art form to new levels, creating magnificent renditions of Persian carpets using only compact coils of Japanese mulberry paper.