Venezuelan textile artists Maria Davila and Eduardo Portillo’s woven ‘Explosion’ in Andrew Kreps Gallery’s land-themed summer group show ‘See You Tomorrow Under Other Skies’ speaks to the creative potential of new and traditional craft traditions. Attracted decades ago to silk, Davila and Portillo sourced silkworm eggs from the Canary Islands and began farming mulberry trees in the Venezuelan Andes to harvest their own crop. Over years, the couple traveled through Venezuela researching native plants and fibers, including those of the moriche palm, whose fibers now form the skeleton of their ‘mosaic’ series, which is made more complex by a multilayer weave structure that results in stacked layers of woven cloth. Natural dyes, particularly indigo, and metallic threads give ‘Explosion’ a dynamic, shimmering presence that conveys the power of the explosion pictured. (On view in Tribeca through Aug 7th).
