30 MUST-SEE ARTISTS AT THE ARMORY SHOW

Martha Schwendender, New York Times, March 8, 2018

There has been a strong interest in fiber and textile art in the last half-decade, circling back to the ’50s and ’60s, as well as newer work. Textiles also honor traditions outside or alongside the Western painting canon. Jeffrey Gibson is a painter, but he also makes ceremonial-style garments, inspired by Native American Ghost Dance shirts. Several wonderful examples, presented by the gallery Kavi Gupta (Booth 611), are suspended from the ceiling in Pier 94. Athi-Patra Ruga, at the Cape Town-based Gallery WHATIFTHEWORLD (P3), is exhibiting tapestries that pay tribute to François “Feral” Benga, a Senegalese dancer who performed at the Folies-Bergère in Paris in the 1920s. Kiki Smith is showing a Jacquard-woven tapestry at Galleria Lorcan O’Neill (705) with shamrock references to her Celtic heritage. (They coincide with a room of Ms. Smith’s tapestries on view at the Haus der Kunst in Munich.) The Havana-based gallery El Apartamento (P24) is showing Reynier Leyva Novo’s wall of fabric scraps taken from workers uniforms and clothing. The master weaver Sissel Blystad, from Norway, has a selection of terrific textiles crafted with hand-dyed wool, on view at Downs & Ross (P6).

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