Darla Bjork “Weavings Tight and Loose”

Soho20 Chelsea Gallery

poster for Darla Bjork “Weavings Tight and Loose”
[Image: Darla Bjork "Outer Space" (2018)]

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SOHO20 presents Weavings Tight and Loose, a new collection of Darla Bjork’s characteristically expressive encaustic and oil stick paintings.

This show brings together works from the last three years in which Bjork has connected her abstract painting style to a tradition of female labor and artistry in her family. The grid-like visual layout structuring the weaving series consciously evokes the warp and weft of the woven rugs Bjork watched her maternal grandmother make as a child. These works are gentler than the scoured and scared works Bjork has produced in recent years. The dense interlocking layers of paint are built over each other, in some cases dictated by the choice of surface, of canvas rather than board.

The series incorporates both tightly woven pieces like Anna’s Rug, a direct reference to her grandmother’s weaving, and looser pieces with more movement, such as Leaving Earth. In Anna’s Rug the warp and weft are balanced, controlled; there is little dimensionality and the surface presses forward against an invisible plane. In contrast, Leaving Earth, the most recently completed piece in the series, shows a deliberate choice to engage with illusionary visual depth to “loosen up” the weave structure as the striking crimson lines reach simultaneously deeper into the canvas and out at the viewer.

Media

Schedule

from May 24, 2019 to June 23, 2019

Opening Reception on 2019-05-24 from 18:00 to 21:00

Artist(s)

Darla Bjork

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