Sabine Reckewell: A Function of Lines  

June 7 - July 25, 2013

Sabine Reckewell began composing “three-dimensional room-sized drawings” in the late 1970’s after earning her MFA in textile art from the famed Fiberworks Center in Berkeley, a program of Lone Mountain College.  In the last several years, Reckewell has revisited previous installations, creating reiterations of past works, and she has continued her exploration of these self-assigned “linear installations.”   Using humble, everyday materials such as string, ribbon and nails, she creates permeable forms and encompassing environments that respond to, interact with, and are supported by the surrounding architecture.   Slightly sagging parallel lines define volumetric shapes like skeletal armatures or CAD renderings of three-dimensional structures.  The specific forms result from the artist’s pre-set construction parameters, the nature of their materials, and the effect of gravity. 

In another process-based body of work that incorporates traditional textile techniques, Reckewell crochets various gauges and types of wire into squares that are wall-mounted like monochromatic canvases.  Each square is produced using the same method, but differences among their unique materials results in a variety of scales, colors, densities and aesthetic presence.  In Square #4, 5 & 6, three separate squares of varying hues and dimensions are overlaid, creating a textile version of Josef Albers’ Homage to a Square.  Reckewell’s cross-media works draw on the reductive qualities of Minimalism, the preeminence of materials in Post-Minimalism, and an emphasis on predetermined processes embraced in Conceptualism.  Now ubiquitous in contemporary art, Reckewell’s integration of the “low” art of textiles into fine art is something she and others pioneered decades ago.

About the Artist:  Sabine Reckewell, born in Goslar, Germany, studied industrial design at the Academy of Fine Arts, Kassel, Germany (1920-1973) and later earned a bachelor’s degree from UC Davis in textile design (1976), and a master’s degree in textile art from Lone Mountain College, San Francisco (1978).  Since 1980, Reckewell has shown her work in exhibitions throughout California as well as in Chicago and New York.  She has also created public installations in San Jose, CA and the Napa Valley, where she currently lives and works. 

Exhibition Gallery