Having seen Nava Lubelski’s last show several years ago at LMAK Projects, I was interested to see what the intrepid stitching artist was up to this time around. Her current exhibition, descriptively titled Roomful, is, in fact, a roomful of her work!
Using both hand and machine sewing techniques, Lubelski roams the artistic map—one piece is an appropriated pink electric blanket with its wiring ripped out and rearranged on the blanket’s surface. Another is a grouping called “Cotton Scraps,” stitched loosely together and to the walls of the gallery, forming a kind of self-conscious spider web of thread and fabric.
Whether with high-tech digital sewing machine, commercial sewing production or the humble needle and thread, Lubelski seems intent on investigating the various possibilities of this craft. This includes a disconcerting act of betrayal in Roomful’s exhibition: According to the gallery director, an unidentified elderly woman, a former art student with no living relatives, entrusted her beloved art school portfolio of drawings to Lubelski, who promptly shredded them and made them into rolled paper sausages arranged on the vintage portfolio. In a show seemingly focused on thread and binding together, this is a kind of celebration of an act of betrayal and destruction.
The most successful pieces in the show are the two that hearken back to Lubelski’s previous work. Painstakingly hand-stitched details on painted canvas are an interesting synthesis of a traditional craft and contemporary painting. In “Pop-Up,” she has created a double-layered canvas, the weaving between the two layers contrasting surface and depth. “Flurries” plays with the idea of a flurry of stitching combined with a flurry of paint.
From paint to thread, Lubelski’s transitions show an artist’s rich exploration of media.
Roomful
Through Dec. 11, LMAK Projects, 139 Eldridge St., 212-255-9707, www.lmakprojects.com.
