Trockel in “Textiles: Open Letter”

As one of the oldest techniques in human culture, textiles store knowledge and labour and communicate via form. The woven structures are based on a system of intersecting threads leading via seriality and repetition to complexity and beauty. While textiles have been used extensively by artists as material, structure, texture and artefact to reflect on forms, processes and abstractions, they have been largely ignored by art history. And while there are many words for weaving, and the connection between textile and text is one of the oldest metaphors in architecture, philosophy and sociology, textiles, having been primarily viewed as a craft, have barely developed an impact within the art historical discourse on modernity, remaining little more than a footnote. …

Rosemarie Trockel in:

Abstraktionen, Textilien, Kunst, im Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach