★E EYED
@ Twelve Ten Gallery
Sept 28 - Nov 2, 2024
Twelve Ten Gallery is pleased to present new fiber works by Tali Halpern. For their debut solo exhibition at the gallery, Halpern has created a new series that employs a wide range of techniques in the fiber arts to explore themes of queer performance and the production of the self in contemporary media.
Halpern works with a digital loom to weave tapestries drawn from their personal collection of texts, images and drag inspired performances. Nonetheless, a person is required to pilot the machine. Even as the machine constructs a pattern from the designs the artist supplies, the body of the artist must adapt their movement to the measure of the machine, where “every pixel is mapped to a thread in the fabric”. Interpenetrated with the assemblage of this new post-industrial form of rapid prototyping, Halpern performs multiple roles simultaneously: Fordist laborer, content creator and microcelebrity, vamping their own image as the star.
Twelve Ten is a contemporary art gallery located in Chicago. Read the full press release on their site.
“Making as being / hands praying” 2024. 24 x 20 in. handwoven on tc2, cotton, thread, dye, grommets, rhinestones and beads. Based on collaboration with Jane Serenska and Stephanie Jensen. Assist from Kate Hassett.
"When it comes to Halpern, it’s impossible to separate the art from its creator. Everything they make is profoundly textual, self-referential, and confessional—a writing and rewriting of the self that’s as much an exercise in creative freedom as it is a tell-all diary. In “★e Eyed,” Halpern underscores this by showing themselves—literally. Each piece features images of Halpern collaged with found text and various patterns made using a digital loom. Text is borrowed from a private arsenal of phrases: an instructive sign on a beach, for example, or a grounding aphorism from a 12-step pamphlet. "
- Micco Caporale for Chicago Reader
“Afraid ?” 2024. 41 x 27 in. handwoven on tc2, cotton, wool, thread and rhinestones.
used me/techniques of coercion, 2024. 15 x16 in. Handwoven fabrics on a TC2, cotton, wool, thread, paint, rhinestones, and beads. Based on a collaboration with Nancy Reyes and Violet Royal. Assist from Kate Hassett.
“⭐️E-EYED” 2024. 48 x 26 in. handwoven fabrics on tc2, wool, beads and rhinestones.
"Good art ought to be legible but with a difference. The ability to transform the raw material of everyday life, especially in the Internet era, into aesthetic objects that are both pleasurable and confrontational, while refusing easy answers is rare. By embedding the blurred lines between human and machine in the means of production, Halpern proposes one powerful mode of reading. The complexity of material and technique in their works’ weave matches the diversity of readings available in the visually complex language Halpern is developing."
- Jennifer Smart for Newcity
“loved then cast aside” 2024. 48 x 30 in. handwoven on tc2, cotton, wool, thread, grommets and rhinestones.
“blood runs throu” 2024. 30 x 27 in. handwoven fabrics on a TC2, wool, beads and rhinestones.
