차승언
Cha Seungean

“A ‘weaving draft’ generally refers to the structure of a fabric design. Specifying conditions for the horizontal and vertical axes creates patterns that can be woven accordingly. Emphasizing the fact that blueprints are necessary both for building a house and for making textiles, I crafted a weaving draft that is beautiful in itself.”—excerpt from the artist statement

Cha Seungean is a sculptural artist who crosses the boundaries between “past and present, East and West, sight and touch, spirit and matter” and weaves new relationships between them. The artist, who majored in fiber art and painting, adds pictorial techniques to weaving to produce her own unique contexts, creating “referential weaving paintings” that vary and intertwine conflicting concepts. In this exhibition, Cha investigates the concept of the “wall” by reflecting on the large accent wall in her living room that she viewed indifferently throughout her 40 years as an apartment dweller, and exploring the intersection of architecture and craft. The artist creates a work of the same size as the accent wall featured in the floor plan of an 84-square-meter apartment, measuring 390 centimeters wide and 227 centimeters high, to contemplate the ambiguity of being both a wall and art. She presents the shape of a multi-layered wall using the blueprint that serves as the basis for both architecture and weaving. Woven as a part of the blueprint pattern, <Wall-Hangings> illustrate how the role of the wall and spatial changes vary depending on the density of the weaving. Inspired by the property of fabric, where density varies depending on the number of threads per unit area, the exhibition presents a process that starts from a loose weave and gradually transforms into a wall that blocks the view. By adjusting the degree of transparency and blockage, the work was designed to have loosely woven threads hanging down toward the floor, while sections of greater thread density become progressively shorter.