Dr. Desiree Koslin, FIT's Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching, and a frequent guest speaker to ITM classes on international trade textile disputes, held an opening reception for her latest exhibit "Dialogues with Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos", on April 27 at the Soho20 Chelsea Gallery.

In this collection of twinned fiber wall sculptures, Koslin makes references to early weave technologies and to ancient metaphor for the making and cutting of threads as life cycles. Koslin employs tablets to weave cut and reassembled fiber and wire elements to express themes of stark duality. Her use of pattern, repetition, and alternation impose overall notions of balance and structure, but within the units a willing submission to loss of control is apparent.

She achieves this by utilizing strong color contrast and threads of varying thickness and textures. Aware of color symbology in world textiles, Koslin frequently uses black, red and white to resonate as earth/female/death, blood/male/life principle, and air/divine/spiritual respectively. Her fiber elements create their own language communicating multiple dualities. The densities and weight of the threads bring about an awareness of the impact of gravity, while quite remarkably evoking a kind of texture and rhythm similar to impasto or to a rapid pen stroke. The sculptures range in mood from insouciant and flirtatious to elegant and stately, yet always provocative.

Desiree Koslin has participated recently in SOHO20 member group shows. A previous solo exhibition at City College, NYC, featured woven structures developed on a CAD-assisted loom.

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Pictures: Pat Yanez