Art and fabric

Sprayed, emptied, thrown or shaken: In colour field painting, colour is applied onto the canvas in generous strokes, soaking deep into the fabric. It is no coincidence that this method, properly called “soak-stain technique”, is similar to the dying process for plain fabrics. Its effect—apart from the composition of the material—is mostly reduced to colour.

Following motif-free “pure painting”, you could call plain fabrics “pure textile art”. It may seem simple, but in detail it is, just like colour field painting, varied and profound. It all starts with the fact that a colour is more than just a colour, and this is true for textiles and for painting. For example, “Black Paintings” by Marcia Hafif do not show just any black but are an attempt by the artist of finding “the most beautiful black”. Olivier Mosset takes this even a step further: For the Swiss, who is one of the key representatives of monochrome painting, colour only exists in relation to one another. Karin Schwarzbek also asks the question of how colour behaves in the picture space. A native from the Swiss canton of Thurgau, she now lives and works in Zurich and sees colour always in motion.

Is this not the same with plain fabric? When you look at a piece of textile as a whole, it may seem calmly regular, but warp by warp and weft by weft it is anything but uniform. Depending on how the light falls, the finest, sometimes iridescent nuances become visible. And depending on their colours, textiles fulfil a different function in a room when interacting with architecture and furnishings—they can make a room calmer or more lively, have a warm or cool effect, or make a statement.

At Création Baumann it is particularly easy to discover variety in the unicoloured. The textile manufacturer from Langenthal, Switzerland, has a range of more than 300 plain fabrics in thousands of different hues, including the following ten textiles which have become true fabric classics since their launch. Each of these fabrics has unique properties—from material, feel and density to weight and surface texture.

OVERVIEW OF ALL PLAIN FABRICS

Marcia Hafif—Table of Pigments, 1991
Photo: Mark Mosman Courtesy of the artist and Fergus McCaffrey
www.fergusmccaffrey.com

Marcia Hafif is represented in Switzerland by the art gallery Mark Müller.
www.markmueller.ch

In cooperation with the Kunsthaus Baselland, the St. Gallen art museum is exhibiting central aspects of Marcia Hafif’s work until 14 January 2018.
www.kunstmuseumsg.ch

Karin Schwarzbek—enamel lacquer, acrylic on undercoated cotton
Photo: schwarzbek.ch

Karin Schwarzbek is represented by the art gallery Bob Gysin.
www.gbg-galerie.ch

Olivier Mosset—Carré Saint Vincent, Scène Nationale, 2006, Centre d’Arts contemporains, Orléans
Photo: VNH Gallery (Definitely closed)

Olivier Mosset—Ohne Titel, 2009 (Untitled)
Photo: massimodecarlo.com

Olivier Mosset is represented by the art galleries VNH Gallery and Galleria Massimo De Carlo.
www.vnhgallery.com (Definitely closed)
www.massimodecarlo.com