The Woven Image
Ethan Cook at Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles
Making art that is odd or hard to define is not an easy feat. In our post-post-modern world, just about everything has been done. You have everything from the baroque to the minimal. However, Propositions, a new show by the artist Ethan Cook at Anat Ebgi in Los Angeles seemingly does just that. The abstract canvases on display beautifully reference painting’s history, but eventually you cannot figure out if they’re paintings at all.
At first glance, these works appear to embody any number 20th-century abstract painters. The color palette is bright and idiosyncratic: hunter greens, pale pinks, royal blues, reds and mustards. There is a sophisticated balance of color and composition in every single one of these works. After a few more moments though, you’ll notice that these aren’t really paintings at all, they’re woven canvas.
Over the past few years, Cook has developed a growing interest in weaving. Using a loom, Cook made the works in the show by first weaving dyed cotton thread, and then stitching these swaths of canvas together. Canvases grew to include scraps and bits from other works, thus linking them (literally and stylistically). This approach led to a completely cohesive mood to all of the works shown here.
Although these are not being paintings, they carry many of the same traits. Cook uses the loom and the structure of the canvas itself to retain the hand of the artist. Unlike the perfectly uniform raw canvas you can buy at any art supply store, Cook’s contain irregularities from his own hand on the loom. Each rectangular patch of fabric is sewn together by Cook, but their weft and warp never seem to run perfectly parallel to the others. Once Cook stretches these canvases over bars, the compositions shift and rectangles don’t appear as neat. Actually, they seem to softly buckle and wiggle along their seams. In another context these differences could be considered imperfections, but Cook uses them as his own gestures, much like a brushstroke of paint. Rather than painting on a surface like canvas, Cook uses the surface itself as his medium.
Cook’s methods are both clever and extremely elegant. While the images themselves may refer back to greats like Sean Scully or Helen Frankenthaler, their production instead utilizes a handicraft that captures the color, light, and texture found in every great painting. Cook’s experimentation has led to works that are indefinable. They’re floating somewhere between art and craft, painting and sculpture; and that is what makes them so successful.
