A weekly recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: textiles galore, including new Madeline Weinrib rugs in dialogue with Rene Ricard at Emma Scully Gallery, a Su Wu–curated tapestry exhibition in Dallas, and woven paintings on view in Brooklyn.

Exhibitions

In 2009, the textile designer Madeline Weinrib began collaborating with the poet, critic, and artist Rene Ricard on a series of painterly rugs. It all started with a design in which Ricard hand wrote Weinrib’s name numerous times; from there, the pair worked with Nepalese weavers to achieve the meticulous specifics of this joint vision (to get the appearance of graphite, 10 different shades of gray were used). Weinrib and Ricard would spend hours discussing the work. After Ricard died in 2014, Weinrib says she “still felt in dialogue with him” and “would have ‘inner fights’ with him over color choices, and yet, even in these moments, I felt his support. This collection is as much about our friendship as it is about the art.” The rugs (in Tiffany Blue, Naples Yellow, Paper White, and Maroc Pink) are now on view at Emma Scully Gallery in Flower Beneath the Foot, a group show celebrating Weinrib and Ricard’s creative partnership; the rugs are paired with sculptural lighting by Dana Arbib and Simone Bodmer-Turner. Arbib’s “I Dreamed” chandeliers, in amber, cream, and black glass, were commissioned for this show, while Bodmer-Turner’s cast bronze “Modern Lily” sconces, were first displayed at her 2024 Year Without a Kiln show at Emma Scully. Up through June 20th.

Founded in 2005 by Jae Chung, Vintage20 has been lauded for staging shows that pair iconic 20th century design with fine art. Vintage20: Design for Living, recently at Tina Kim Gallery in New York, celebrated the efforts of the Manhattan-based design firm, coinciding with the publication of Design for Living, a new book documenting Vintage20 presentations over the years. Curated by Adam Charlap Hyman, the exhibition was set up as a series of domestic vignettes: a restaging of Chung’s study, which includes a rare Jean Prouvé table, along with a living room and dining room featuring pieces by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, and George Nakashima. And all of it surrounded with art by Warhol, Basquiat, Alexander Calder, Louise Bourgeois, Sterling Ruby, Luc Tuymans, and modern interpretations of the traditional Korean moon jar by Kang Minsoo and Jane Yang D’Haene. (Photos © Eric Petschek)

Brooklyn-based textile artist Carolina Jiménez sees her works as “woven paintings” and her pieces draw deeply on her background in architecture as well as the weaving techniques of Mexico, where her parents are from. She references and abstracts traditional clothing designs, like the tunic-style huipil, and in All That We Carry, her first solo show at Hesse Flatow in New York this past month, Jiménez traces and evokes ancestral lineage, especially matrilineal, through naturally dyed silks, cottons, and linen that have been stretched, rolled or bundled, stacked or heaped, that are in the process of unraveling or lean against the wall. Jiménez’s work highlights the way textiles have never been simply about utility, but about creating lasting sense-memories – and the way our pasts are marked in fabric itself, through folds, creases, frayed edges, tears, and repairs.

At Dallas Contemporary, Mexico City-based curator Su Wu has brought together 30 artists, including El Anatsui, Mika Tajima (above, top), Candice Lin, Diedrick Brackens, Sanam Khatibi, Melissa Cody, Goshka Macuga, Christy Matson (above, bottom), Analia Saban, Jovencio de la Paz, and Sarah Rosalena for You Stretched Diagonally Across It: Contemporary Tapestry, a group show that opened earlier this month. The show takes its title from a line in Kafka’s 47-page letter to his controlling father, whom he imagined sprawling across a map of the whole world. There’s a lot to unpack, as they say, in that letter, just as there is with this exhibition. This gathering of contemporary textile work produces a conceptual density matched by its emotional depth and layers. These pieces explore the space between human and machine, patterns and algorithms, repetition and invention, intention and glitches, and the ongoing significance of woven image-making in our digitally-saturated world. On view through October 12.

The works of Jean Alexander Frater are literal shapeshifters, as figures dissolve into abstraction, and paintings become sculptures, spilling over and out of any contained form. In her new show Wee Restless Hours at The Mission Projects in Chicago, Color Field painting is a jumping off point for the artist (also based in Chicago) whose oversize canvases are torn apart and then put back together, scaled down to a third of their original size, becoming fragmented yet whole. There’s a collapsing of space, distance, and boundaries, an inviting sense of intimacy and texture, but also mystery. The competing urges to rest and to move – and whatever lies between these states – are in an intriguing, ongoing conversation in these pieces. On view through June 14th.

Discoveries

In his Spectre series of chairs, Paris-based designer Jean Couvreur uses rough-cut paper to fashion small-scale models, then carries the cut-out shapes through into the full-size objects. The ten variations on a theme combine an economy of form with playful, spiky flourishes: legs that resemble lightning bolts or that seem to undulate. Earlier this month at the Émergences Bienniale, Couvreur exhibited a dozen chairs based on this process (in various states of completion – some functional, some prototypes, while others were cardboard models waiting for transformation).

When East Fork was founded a decade and a half ago by Alex and Connie Matisse with John Vigeland, Alex sought to distance himself from the family name (yes, it’s that Matisse). “For a long time, my family’s legacy felt more like a shadow than something to celebrate, so much so that I needed to disappear in the mountains of North Carolina to find my way out of it,” he says. But finally, the brand is paying homage to its ancestry with an addition to the permanent collection that includes an assortment of plates, platters, and mugs decorated with surface decals and aquatint renderings from Matisse’s portfolio including Bédouine au grand voile (1947), Nadia au regard sérieux (1948), Le Platane (1951) and the series of Nu bleu (1952), among others. With the new line also comes a new color way: La Sirène, a deep, Matisse-inspired blue.

Shops & Showrooms

The ever-expanding empire of Big Night — a dinner party essentials store with locations in the West Village and Greenpoint — recently expanded its Brooklyn location to three times the original size, decking out the new space with playful lighting by local designers Trueing and Astraeus Clarke, a custom bar designed by East Otis, a mural by London-based Lucy Muss, drapes by Colours of Arley, and tons of new colorful housewares including some personal favorites: chunky bowls by Soft Edges and an array of Sabre flatware with pearlescent handles. Photos © Laura S. Wilson

The name JONALDDUDD has been making us laugh since 2015, but the irreverent platform for “dissenting voices” in design, has provided a serious New York Design week context for design talent by “prioritizing personal expression and formal exploration over commercial conformity.” Now comes DUDD HAUS, a new collective and storefront in Philadelphia that’s an ongoing extension of the JONALDDUDD ethos, featuring the work of over 25 designers, mostly JONALDDUDD alums (whose pieces will also be available in the DUDD HAUS online shop and 1st Dibs). Heading up DUDD HAUS are JONALDDUDD co-founder Chris Held of furniture company Nice Condo and Charles Constantine of Bestcase, and in addition to their own projects, DUDD HAUS currently includes beeep, Carl Durkow, Chen & Kai, Donut, East Otis Studio, H. Bigeleisen Designs, Hamilton Holmes, Henry Merker, James Burial, Jean-Michel Gadoua, Jordan Maurice, Koba, Leeward Studio, Malcolm Majer, Mark Dineen, Mothership Studio, Mike Newins, Nicholas Tilma, Nine Stories Co, Normalcy, Overt Cove, Realm, Scott Newlin, Steven Bukowski, and Spacecraft.

Part development company, part platform for showcasing designers and artists, On the Square has gone down the rabbit hole with their latest project, taking inspiration from Alice in Wonderland. Interior designer and curator Irenie Cossey, along with her team, renovated a four level 1840s Neo-Jacobean residence on De Beauvoir Square in London, playing with scale and spatial illusion, and filling the immersive space with custom pieces like a dining table by Rio Kobayashi that uses doors found onsite; Tomoyo Tsurumi reworked old curtains with new Kvadrat fabric; and Michael Murphy of Muck collaborated with Kasia Kempa and Cossey on a chair shaped from a fallen oak tree, around which Flavia Brändle designed series of objects. The house also features glassware by J. Hill’s Standard, blankets from The Tweed Project, and McCormack Joinery worked with Irenie Studio on cabinetry. On The Square planned six weeks of events and days of public viewings, before the property went on the market.

Melbourne-based designer and furniture maker Zachery Frankel recently launched Hotel House, a new showroom and event space for exhibitions, workshops, and gatherings in the city’s Northcote Arms Hotel. Frankel’s intuitive material exploration leads to furniture pieces and sculptural lighting that feel both experimental and refined. In keeping with that spirit, Hotel House is meant to be a place that’s “personal, evolving, and alive,” as he puts it. Currently open by appointment.