Kustaa Saksi

First Symptoms

16 January - 8 March 2020

Amsterdam-based artist Kustaa Saksi’s exhibition presents three unique tapestries of First Symptoms series manufactured with Jacquard weaving technique. They are woven using cotton warp with mohair, silk, alpaca, cashwool, velvet, rubber, viscose, copper and transparent polyester yarns resulting in richly layered, multi-sensory works that draw their inspiration and texture from the scientific examination and personal experience of migraine.

He’s portraying the ways of migraine behaviour with drastic contrasts in material use, repeating patterns and rhythmic textures with disorders: sometimes appearing like nerve cells building brain connections, resembling the growing roots of a horseradish or fractal-like Lichtenberg figures – electric discharges on surface. Pulsating, disruptive, delusional, or relieving at times – then aggressive again. Prodrome, aura, attack, post-drome – the phases of migraine seen in Saksi’s tapestries are influenced by ornamentation from a variety of sources: from nature’s systems, scientific illustration and tribal art to black metal visuals. He has chosen the weaving technique and materials to emphasise the nature of migraine and to accent the healing approach of the artworks as well, them being tactile and gentle constructions.

Saksi has spent the past seven years at TextielLab under Het Nederlandse Textielmuseum in Tilburg, The Netherlands, where he has been developing weaving techniques, experimenting with materials and finding his own unique weaving processes that he describes as “action-painting with warp and weft”. Using a traditional weaving technique, he combines natural fibres with advanced synthetic yarns to create complex digital to analog textures.

Kustaa Saksi (b. 1975, Kouvola, Finland) is a multidisciplinary textile artist living and working in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Ideas of nature seen from the abstracted edge of perception pervade all of his work. Saksi has shown his works at museums worldwide, including Victoria & Albert Museum, Cooper Hewitt Museum, San Jose Museum of Art, TextielMuseum, Design Museum Helsinki, Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Kunsthall Stavanger and Helsinki Kunsthall. He has held solo exhibitions at galleries in New York, London, Paris, Hong Kong, Taipei, Madrid, Brussels, Helsinki and Amsterdam.