Alexandra Lange
Architecture & design critic

Visit: Thread Lines

William J. O'Brien. 'Untitled,' 2013. Courtesy the Artist + Marianne Boesky Gallery.

Thread Lines at the Drawing Center in Soho through Dec. 14 is a perfect small show. One gallery, simple premise, incredible richness and variety. Curator Joanna Kleinberg Romanow has assembled work by 16 textile artists … but “textile” can mean so many different things. William J. O’Brien’s felted play with positive and negative space, Jessica Rankin’s shimmering metallic stitches on organdy, Anne Wilson’s environmental work, weaving neon threads between the cast-iron columns of the former weaving factory. It includes unusual pieces by artists who often work in other media, like Louise Bourgeois’s simple (albeit spidery) quilts, and stunning work by some younger artists new to me. I was particularly taken with Monica Bengoa’s ongoing installation, which floats scintillating still-life embroideries, fragments of a feast, on a wall where the rest of the party is drawn in pencil. In her work in particular, the common ground between the pencil and the thread becomes perfectly clear.