Vibrant, groundbreaking "Fiber: Sculpture 1960-Present" opens in February

“Splendid, viscerally engaging…
[a] groundbreaking exhibition.”—Boston Globe

Columbus, OH—This winter, the Wexner Center presents Fiber: Sculpture 1960­–present, the first exhibition in four decades to examine the development and diversity of fiber-based work in contemporary art. The survey, which features works by 33 artists whose boundary-breaking pieces explore abstraction, materiality, and the blurred lines between art and craft, is on view February 7–April 12, 2015.

Says Wexner Center Director Sherri Geldin, “This stunning exhibition provides an immersive exploration of bold fiber-based works that range from the intimate to the monumental. Most importantly, Fiber rightfully positions the seemingly limitless potential of fiber art within and among the most compelling mediums over 60-plus years of contemporary art history.”

“Contemporary fiber art has a history of being set apart from—and by implication beneath—painting and sculpture. It’s been decades since the last major museum show devoted to it, but even a quick tour of Fiber: Sculpture 1960–Present…tells us what we’ve been missing,” says the New York Times’s Holland Cotter.

The exhibition revels in the diversity not only of fiber itself, but its application and potential for use in a range of scales. Viewers will encounter such immersive works as Sheila Hicks’s Banisteriopsis II (1965–66/2010), an amorphous yellow wool-and-linen freestanding sculpture whose shape-shifting form exploits the flexibility of the medium to create a work with infinite installation possibilities. A haunting large-scale mixed-media work, Haegue Yang’s Floating Knowledge and Growing Craft—Silent Architecture Under Construction (2013) appears as a floating island strewn with long-forgotten mementoes. The work incorporates the sounds of radio programs and podcasts Yang listened to while creating the work—an auditory element that creates a poignant tension between public and private, past and present.

The exhibition also includes works by early innovators, such as the Ohio-born Lenore Tawney, and by notable contemporary artists such as Alexandre da Cunha, Ernesto Neto, and Yang, each of which trace the evolution of fiber-based artwork as artists and curators have engaged with—and boldly abandoned—the historical confines of fiber-based art, when works were historically gendered feminine, carrying connotations of intimacy and domesticity. These characteristics relegated fiber compositions to the realm of craft, far away from the world of fine art.

Fiber: Sculpture 1960–present traces the evolution of fiber-based artwork as artists and curators have engaged with and boldly abandoned these historical confines. Ultimately the exhibition affirms the limitless potential for conceptual and material exploration in contemporary fiber art—firmly situating fiber composition within the broad framework of art-making in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Fiber was curated by curated by Jenelle Porter, Mannion Family Senior Curator, and organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston where it made its debut in October 2014; this is the first stop on a tour that also includes a stop at the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa May 8–August 2, 2015

EXHIBITION-RELATED EVENTS
A free exhibition preview will be held on Friday, February 6, 6–9 pm. Guests are encouraged to RSVP at http://www.wexarts.org/rsvp or by emailing rsvp@wexarts.org. Featured Fiber artists Anne Wilson and Josh Faught will visit for a free artist’s talk on Thursday, February 26, at 4:30 pm to discuss their work and the student-mentor relationship. On Sunday, March 1, noon–5 pm, Super Sunday: FiberFull will feature free gallery tours and interactive experiences for all ages.  Walk-in tours, free with gallery admission, are scheduled for 4 pm Thursday, February 19, and Thursday, February 26.