Interviews
Atlas Warp: Talismanic Rugs of Moroccan Nomads
12 Dec '06
3 min read
The show is going to take place at Axis Gallery, New York 453 West 17th Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10011, Dates: Through December 21, 2006.
A carpet show in the heart of Manhattan's contemporary art district might seem odd. But Axis Gallery has, as the New York Times recently put it, made New York history by inserting African art into the Chelsea scene.
The owners, husband-and-wife team Dr. Gary van Wyk and Lisa Brittan, by training both artists and art historians, unsettle the stereotype of "African art" as carved by male sculptors from west and central Africa.
Axis Gallery has highlighted arts from east and southern Africa and women's traditions of mural painting and beadwork whose graphic impact parallel their spiritual power.
Axis simultaneously underscores the modernity of African art by showing cutting-edge contemporary work by African artists, many with global reach.
Berber carpets extend this dual emphasis. Like much African art, though in this case textural weavings by women from an overlooked region of African art, they are religious works designed to repel negativity.
Moroccan carpets also have a vital nexus with Western aesthetics. They influenced such masters of modernism as Matisse and Klee and played a key role in interiors designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Marcel Breuer, Alvar Aalto, Arne Jacobsen, Gerrit Van Rietveld, the Bauhaus' Max Bill, and Charles and Ray Eames.
To Modernism's pared-down interiors and abstract art, the restrained markings and subtle color shifts on luxurious, deep-pile woolen Berber carpets imparted human warmth and the trace of the human hand.
A carpet show in the heart of Manhattan's contemporary art district might seem odd. But Axis Gallery has, as the New York Times recently put it, made New York history by inserting African art into the Chelsea scene.
The owners, husband-and-wife team Dr. Gary van Wyk and Lisa Brittan, by training both artists and art historians, unsettle the stereotype of "African art" as carved by male sculptors from west and central Africa.
Axis Gallery has highlighted arts from east and southern Africa and women's traditions of mural painting and beadwork whose graphic impact parallel their spiritual power.
Axis simultaneously underscores the modernity of African art by showing cutting-edge contemporary work by African artists, many with global reach.
Berber carpets extend this dual emphasis. Like much African art, though in this case textural weavings by women from an overlooked region of African art, they are religious works designed to repel negativity.
Moroccan carpets also have a vital nexus with Western aesthetics. They influenced such masters of modernism as Matisse and Klee and played a key role in interiors designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Marcel Breuer, Alvar Aalto, Arne Jacobsen, Gerrit Van Rietveld, the Bauhaus' Max Bill, and Charles and Ray Eames.
To Modernism's pared-down interiors and abstract art, the restrained markings and subtle color shifts on luxurious, deep-pile woolen Berber carpets imparted human warmth and the trace of the human hand.
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