MICA presents Warren Seelig: Textile per se, a retrospective of work by Rockland, Maine-based fiber artist Warren Seelig. The exhibition will be featured Friday, Dec. 4, 2009-Sunday, March 14, 2010 in the Meyerhoff and Decker galleries of Fox Building, 1303 W. Mount Royal Ave., and Leidy Atrium of Brown Center, 1301 W. Mount Royal Ave.
A reception takes place Friday, Dec. 4, 5-7 p.m.
Seelig, who is teaching an interdisciplinary drawing course at the College during the fall semester, has insisted on continuously defining and redefining the qualities that are unique to textile and especially to a kind of abstraction rooted in repetitive processes.
The retrospective features selections from the fiber artist’s three main bodies of work. These include handwoven and manipulated wall mounted works of the 1970s and early ’80s and the skeletal/skin “spoke and wheel” sculptures from the ’80s and ’90s. MICA will also reveal Seelig’s most recent series of works that examine matter and light, Shadowfields.
“The idea of a textile is for me a phenomenon [that] has its source in the magic I experienced when weaving my first length of cloth,” Seelig said. “Through the accumulation of thousands of intersecting threads, I observed the growth of an energy field, which for me was organic and alive, where its true life was not represented on the surface of the cloth, but hidden within. That early experience of constructing a textile has informed my work in many ways, including the more recent Shadowfields.”
In addition to transforming MICA’s galleries with Seelig’s idiosyncratic hybrid forms, the exhibition includes the artist’s preparatory works – models, samples and sketches – to provide a glimpse into his working process. It also features works produced by ceramics, fiber, interdisciplinary sculpture and general fine arts majors in Seelig’s class.
“This is the first opportunity to acknowledge and examine Seelig’s major contributions in defining the field of fiber in one space,” says Susie Brandt, chair of MICA’s fiber department and curator of the exhibition. “As well, it is equally satisfying to finally see such a large part of his oeuvre.” For more information, call 410-225-2300.
