SYMBOLIC TOTEMS
I have a deep interest in the stories, applications, materials, and techniques that have been told through textiles and the people that create them: the historical nature of man-made creations from different regions, tribes, or villages that construct these intricate pieces. Men and women contributing to conceive unique works through the making of textiles. Ceremonial, everyday use, wearables, trade or decoration: shapes, patterns, color, and ideas unfold through the centuries.
This body of work is a contemporary interpretation and influence from textiles from the past, using dark and light organic, biological forms as well as abstract exteriors, but can also be experienced purely as combinations of shapes, line, and texture. Despite their simplicity, they have a captivating quality that rewards careful looking which reveals the complexity and fragility of contemporary works, hand-embroidered into paper and linen, enlivened by a sense of depth that only seems to grow with the continued examination.
- Jason Kriegler
BIO
Kriegler’s work has been exhibited both within the U.S. and internationally. He currently lives and works in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico.
-----
While in art school in the mid-’80s, Kriegler was intrigued by the rising textile artists, contemporary art and modernism that were changing the art scene; especially Bauhaus and Black Mountain College where new ideas and techniques were being challenged
and created.
Influences of his work were and are abstract modernist artists; Dubuffet, Anni Albers, Bryce Marden, Anslem Keifer, Franz Kline, Helen Frankenthaler, Sheila Hicks, Ruth Asawa and Cy Twombly to name a few.
These artists influenced his work and helped push the boundaries of what textile art or fiber art is. Painting and textiles can the both be intertwined, infused.
------
‘Not the norm’ of traditions. i.e. hand embroidery into paper rather than traditional fabric. He began as a traditional painter then made the transition to mixed-media, using found objects and materials in the early ‘90s.
Over the past 10 years, he began using embroidery or stitching into different mediums to create modern contemporary dimensional forms based on his experiences traveling and learning about techniques old and new through the making of textiles.
