Willie Cole
Hot Spot
Hot Spot, 2019, 150 knots per inch hand-spun and hand-dyes New Zealand wool, 72 x 50 inches, Edition of 18 + 2 APd
Hot Spot, 2019, 150 knots per inch hand-spun and hand-Dyed New Zealand wool, 72 x 50 inches, Edition of 18 + 2 APs
BravinLee editions is very pleased to present its newest rug edition, Hot Spot
by Willie Cole. In the early 1990s, Cole began incorporating a variety of irons into his work, to allude to African tribal mask associations and white-household, mammy archetypes.
Willie Cole lives and works in New Jersey. He is a noted sculptor, printer and conceptual Post-Modernist with a keen eye for visual transformation. Cole mines society's edges to repurpose discarded remains and rejected consumer culture objects to shine a light on the best and worst aspects of human behavior. A skeptic not a cynic, Cole's motifs are consciousness raising but not heavy-handed, he expresses a hopefulness through his own unique form of Dada based ready-made idealism. His work reminds the viewer to re-see the detritus of humankind in surprising, beautiful and affirming ways.
"Finding beauty in the commonplace — some may even say banal — is one of artist Willie Cole’s strengths. His ability to rejigger the consumer world around us into something more fantastic creates the illusion that his art springs from the mystical intersection of folk culture, utility, design, contemporary art, and mythology." – Hrag Vartanian, HYPERALLERGIC
Willie Cole's work has been the subject of several one-person museum exhibitions: Montclair Art Museum (2006), University of Wyoming Art Museum (2006), the Tampa Museum of Art (2004), Miami Art Museum (2001), Bronx Museum of the Arts (2001) and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1998). Several of his sculptures were included in “Reconfiguring an African Icon: Odes to the Mask by Modern and Contemporary Artists from Three Continents,” which opened in March 2011 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 2010, a survey exhibition of his work on paper (1975-2010) took place at the James Gallery of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and later travelled to the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art at the University of Alabama and the Rowan University Art Gallery in Glassboro, NJ. In January 2013, Complex Conversations: Willie Cole Sculptures and Wall Works opened at Albertine Monroe-Brown Gallery at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. The exhibition will then travel to the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro.
Detail (cut pile and looped low pile)
BravinLee editions is a proud member of GoodWeave
GoodWeave’s founder Kailash Satyarthi was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in honor of his career dedicated to ending the exploitation of children around the world. GoodWeave, an international nonprofit organization geared toward abolishing child labor in the carpet industry, has liberated and educated thousands of children, bringing them from carpet looms to classrooms. Satyarthi and GoodWeave work to guide consumers to its Child Labor Free Certified rugs and replicate their market-based approach of certification in other sectors. Kailash said at the ceremony, “I refuse to accept that the shackles of slavery can ever be stronger than the quest for freedom.” He asked those in attendance to place their hands over their hearts and “listen to the child inside.”