“Fiber Reveries” at The Border Gallery

Gabriella Moreno, Janet Loren Hill, Jongbum Kim, Ruth Jeyaveeran, and Yura Adams

October 7 – 29th, 2022

The Border Gallery is pleased to present Reverie, a group exhibition with artists Janet Loren Hill, Jongbum Kim, Gabriella Moreno, Ruth Jeyaveeran, and Yura Adams. Each artist reflects on the show’s theme with their playful textile sculptures, exhibiting their distinctive relationship with the medium and their interpretation of dreams.

Reverie (n): a state of being pleasantly lost in one’s thoughts; a daydream

Janet Loren Hill’s surrealistic and voyeuristic sculpture—Binocular Viewpoint: Like snow; a silencing blanket; a collapsing shelter—evokes a dream-like, tantalizing experience as she plays with the absurd motif of the 1950s Chattering Teeth toy: “We see them filling the air with their misdirections, sinking their bite into flesh softened by fear and fantasy, and ignoring logic gaps in service of their desperate self-preservation.” By skewing the eye with vibrant dots of variegated hues, her pointillistic implementation lures and hypnotizes the viewer as they attempt to comprehend the artist’s depiction of the unconscious bubbling to the surface. 

Jongbum Kim’s work is rooted in the consideration and union of dualities: matter and spirit, inner and outer, and good and evil. The Unknown (Alien), constructed with recycled textiles, is an interactive teepee designed for children to explore their “inner world,” exhibiting the imaginative and playful character we inhabited as kids and the fantasies we’d concoct. The Rugs shown reflect the artists’ multinational upbringing and as a result, the chameleon-like character they identify with. Although the rugs are varied in colors and textures, the assortment of diversity lives harmoniously and symbiotically together, conveying Kim’s embrace of cross-culturalism.

Gabriella Moreno’s textile drape, When We Lay Closely and Try to Stare Into Each Other’s Eyes, depicts one’s field of vision while intimately laying in a bed across their lover: “laying so closely that one’s eyes almost cross, or go out of focus, and how when this happens one’s other senses can take prominence.” The hodgepodge of fabric scraps, representing the wrinkled sheets and covers, is anchored by two lipstick kiss marks on the top right of the piece, which alludes to the chaotic nature of infatuation and enchantment being grounded by the foundation of connection and love.

Ruth Jeyaveeran contemplates the function and the metaphor of cairns (man-made stacks of rocks) in her wool-constructed piece Woolly Cairns. The textile rocks exude energetic values of red and are overlaid with white marks reminiscent of geological lines. She ponders and invites viewers to question the metaphorical nature of these rocks, which have been used as navigational tools by cultures throughout history. Is the way forward a straight and narrow path? Or can we move toward a softer space that prioritizes communities, networks, and connections over hard, concrete divisions?

Yura Adams’ works revolve around abstracting and portraying the poetry embedded in nature and science. Influenced by her concerns about global warming and her observations of the fast-moving clouds, birds, and atmospheric shifts in the light outside her studio, Adams’ paintings are captivating and transfixing as the texture and colors induce the feeling of “the ocean of air. ”Skies in the Road re-images the beauty in nature and provides a glimpse into the way the artist perceives and interprets the environment surrounding her.