I S SUE 75 123
ilhena
VVasco
@
ller y. Photos
Car lier | Gebauer Ga of
Cour tesy i
©AndreaRossett ist. Photos ar t the and ller y
Car lier | Gebauer Ga of
Cor tesy
03
ist ar t the of
Cour tesy
Guests on the HALI Tour in Iberia, operated by COVER’s sister publication HALI this April, visited the weaving studios at Factum Arte: a multidisciplinary art factory specialising in the invention of new technologies to create groundbreaking art. The group was captivated by shimmering swathes of fibres on Jacquard tapestry samples created for the Malaga-based artist Leonor Serrano Rivas. As the company’s owner, Adam Lowe, held the textiles up to view, their loosely draped threads rippled across the fabric’s reverse like water. The artist is now bringing this initially unintentional effect to the fore.
Serrano Rivas commissioned her first tapestries, Tables of the Moon, for her solo show, ‘Natural Magic’ at Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofia (21 September 2022–27 February 2023). The show was conceived during the pandemic, a time she describes as feeling like ‘the end of the world’. As modern science floundered, the artist looked back to the 17th-century ‘natural magic’ period: ‘A moment when artists, craftsman, and scientists were working together to create new objects—their goal was to explore the limits of the gaze and therefore the limits of imagination.’
The exhibition’s three installations were each based on an ‘instrument of imagination’ born of the historic movement: camera obscura, magic lantern and musical instruments. The four large tapestries were made using Jacquard punchcards based on the musical score for the artist’s film, The Sun Is Counting the Earth’s
02
01 Illuminated Molecular Clouds, 2024, Leonor Serrano Rivas 02 Violent Birth of the Stars, 2023, Leonor Serrano Rivas 03 Rhythmpatterns no1, 2024, Leonor Serrano Rivas 04 Snow Moon, 2023 (detail), Leonor Serrano Rivas
04
Rotations, showing in the first room. In the second was Stardust—twenty-four glass plates with silicates baked on to them in a kiln. Serrano Rivas sent an astronomer and an astrologer images of these works in reverse. The first received mostly black versions, the second, mostly white. These chance compositions, made with minerals sent to earth via the deterioration of stars, were then interpreted by the two, who linked them to cosmic events.
Playful reversal also informed her next tapestries created using reversed versions of punchcards based on Stardust. ‘Sometimes, tapestries break because of the tension, but the weaver I’m working with is willing to experiment’, she reports. ‘I enjoy working with Factum Arte because I can play the role of the naïve artist looking at crafts with a really free gaze. I’m able to push the limits of craft into new expressions that have not been made before.’
Serrano Rivas has just taken up weaving herself. I ask how soon she will disrupt the process. ‘Immediately!’ she replies. www.leonorserranorivas.com
