Lap of the Gods, Caro, Sarah Brook Gallery, Los Angeles
Lap of the Gods,
CARO
October 26 - November 30, 2024
Sarah Brook Gallery
If it’s true that attention is the highest form of prayer, in the words of Simone Weil, then the luminous textiles comprising CARO’s debut solo exhibition, “Lap of the Gods,” are devotional objects. One doesn’t need to know that the show represents more than a thousand hours of labor or that the creation of one of the tapestries spans five years to see the cumulative effect of such durational attention: a sometimes contemplative, other times ecstatic, interiority.
Using silk filament, sequins, and beads, bullion knots, picot stitches, and surface couching bind color to light, the workings of hands to the vision behind closed eyes. CARO’s consonant interests in jewelry and embroidery—they received their BA in Metalsmithing from Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, and continued onto Embroidery School at École Lesage in Paris, France—produce the dynamic tension between the tangible and intangible at the heart of their practice. Diaphanous organza trimmed with iridescent beads is stretched taut across obdurate metal frames.
Here, with each pass and pull of needle and thread, that which is mysterious and ethereal threatens to escape the staid ore to which it’s bound. In Is it the same for you?, the frothy night sky is fixed within a hand-fabricated brass and silver frame covered in radiating tines that emphasizes the dissonance but also the interdependence of the materials: the fabric would fall slack without the structural tension; the frame would lose its context, its meaning. Imagining the tapestries in rectangular frames rather than embroidery hoops, CARO collapses the tired distinction between fine and applied arts. Their use of luxuriant untwisted silks, rarefied jewels like sapphires and rubies, and precious metals elevate the decorative premium of the textiles and give the works their illusory and ambiguously reflective surfaces. By relegating the metalwork, historically considered a man’s trade, to bracing and displaying the textiles, the long-underestimated women’s pastime further subverts convention. —Tara Anne Dalbow
CARO (b. 1992) is a multidisciplinary craft artist based in London, UK. They received their BA in Metalsmithing from Earlham College and continued onto Embroidery School at École Lesage in Paris, France. CARO then learned bobbin lacemaking at the Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn, NY. Currently they are pursuing their Masters in Jewelry and Metalsmithing at the Royal College of Art. They blend hand embroidered tapestries with hand fabricated metal framework to recall a sense of the sacred and to preserve the cultural identity of craft. CARO has exhibited their work internationally. Recent group shows include Aurora Borealis at Abigail Olgilvy, LA; Whisper In The Roots, My Pet Ram, NYC, NY; Eternal Flame, Fredericks & Mae, NYC, NY, Red Thread, Latitude Gallery, NYC, NY; Summer Crush, Arden Asbaek, Copenhagen, DK; Act II, Yellow Cube Gallery, Paris, FR; & Craft in Contemporary Art, Site: Brooklyn, NY.
