The Bulthaup Toronto showroom on King Street East feature the work of a different artist each quarter. Now showing is Felt Studio: Recent Works by Kathryn Walter.
Since 1989, Walter has explored the material and culture of modern industrial felt. Her installations, exhibitions and products are sometimes serious, formal investigations and sometimes they are full of humour or contradiction.
Walter”s work tends to evolve from the limits she sets for herself such as using only squares or rectangle shapes, or working with only grey tones. Her wall works are fabricated from remnants gathered from previous artworks or off-cuts from felt machinery parts.
On exhibit is an architectural molding Walter originally made for the Fashioning Felt exhibition at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, in New York. Her friezes and moldings are studies in contrast with shapes appearing at once fibrous and organic, as well as hard edge and geometric. Pieces are folded and stitched so that they look simultaneously soft like wool and hard like carved stone relief, merging art and architecture. Obviously worked by hand, they also affirm the human and natural presence in the built environment.
A second wall hanging uses Walter”s recurring “lily” motif. These organic forms are made from four-inch squares of felt pinned to an arrangement of felt circles that are remnants from die-cutting industrial gaskets. The clusters are held together only by pins sunk firmly into the half inch thick felt providing a surprisingly sound structure that paradoxically conveys both temporality and permanence.
Felt Studio: Recent Works by Kathryn Walter runs at Bulthaup Toronto until the end of June..
Bulthaup information: 280 King Street East, Suite 100 Toronto ON M5A 1K7 hours: Mon-Fri 10-6, Sat 11-3 or by appointment T: 416 361 9005 F: 416 850 4365 [email protected] www.toronto.bulthaup.com