CARO: Lap of the Gods
5229 Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles, CA, 90027
Saturday, October 26 at 6:00 PM 8:00 PM
Ends Dec 7, 2024
If it’s true that attention is the highest form of prayer, in the words of Simone Weil, then the luminous textiles comprising CARO’s debut solo exhibition, “Lap of the Gods,” are devotional objects. One doesn’t need to know that the show represents more than a thousand hours of labor or that the creation of one of the tapestries spans five years to see the cumulative effect of such durational attention: a sometimes contemplative, other times ecstatic, interiority. Using silk filament, sequins, and beads, bullion knots, picot stitches, and surface couching bind color to light, the workings of hands to the vision behind closed eyes. CARO’s consonant interests in jewelry and embroidery—they received their BA in Metalsmithing from Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, and continued onto Embroidery School at École Lesage in Paris, France—produce the dynamic tension between the tangible and intangible at the heart of their practice. Diaphanous organza trimmed with iridescent beads is stretched taut across obdurate metal frames. Here, with each pass and pull of needle and thread, that which is mysterious and ethereal threatens to escape the staid ore to which it’s bound. In Is it the same for you?, the frothy night sky is fixed within a hand-fabricated brass and silver frame covered in radiating tines that emphasizes the dissonance but also the interdependence of the materials: the fabric would fall slack without the structural tension; the frame would lose its context, its meaning.