The Moods of Textures in Jill Trappler’s “Unfolding Her”

Jill Trappler’s “Unfolding Her” is an exhibition about individuality or the search for individuality. Permeating through the fabrics, canvases and threads are signs for borders and traversal of those that the artist negotiates. Stitched in the crevices and lines of the art works are the signs that are symbolize the concretization and disintegration of discovery and relinquishment that individual searches are characterized by. If one recalls the video piece in the exhibition for example, the artist writes that while making the video the spontaneity and discoveries that stitched it together enabled her to perceive ‘borders’ and lines between the images that naturally fit just like the processes of transitions or finding freedom for oneself. In viewing the video one can discern the creases and folds and that the spaces the fabrics are captured in and the vocals give the piece a sense of melancholy and pensiveness that is as fleeting as innate thought and as memorable and palpable as the sounds that emanate from the video. Also pensive and poetic, it is a piece that is finished with a measure of the stillness of the moment and the capacity for discovery that it gives the artist. The piece is also a piece that is about the rediscovery of sound and thought as acoustic texture that can stitch together moment from another, but also one moment of discovery from another. The camera seems to capture images from the same angle, but as the video unfolds, the play and lay of the images reveal and conceal energies and feelings from one moment to next as if the camera peels off the layers of fabric.

The video piece in a certain measure anchors the exhibition, in that if borders in the video piece are frail, in the canvas on acrylic pieces they are concrete but they are also about disintegration. In some of the pieces the artist collaged dyed silk on canvas with acrylic paint, by removing the area where the fabric was, the area with effect of the acrylic not only concretise borders within the pieces, but it also reveals a frailty about them, that is not just about discovery, they are also about rediscovery in the sense that, without the area where the fabric was the passion and drama of the melancholy or pensiveness would be barren of the sense of freedom that connect them.

This in effect is characterized by the large canvas pieces, where melancholy of disintegration in the printed areas and passion of the bold and delicate strokes on the periphery of the piece combine and render the mood of the textures in the pieces to disintegrate and transmit characteristic of a discovery. An example is the blue and white rendition acrylic piece with delicate white strokes on a blue disintegrating to a pale blue with an ice white area where a fabric was imprinted and made bold with paint. At the top of the painting bold white strokes not only give the recesses of the piece depth and borders, but they also enable the techniques to connect, as if to capture the drama of discovery and relinquishment, but also rediscovery and the freedom that it can connote.

On another piece, rendered with orange, yellow, a green background for depth and a subtle white on the imprint to make the piece unfold or disintegrate with the same effect of peeling off the layers evident in the depth of the piece or the folds of the fabric.

The imprints also are rendered with a spontaneous character of their own, with a measure of the haphazard, that when the artist seeks to find lines that the combination between the eye and hand cannot find, but can only be achieved through the facility of intuition, the operation between the freedom of the heart and the hand, the freedom that the fabric affords and operates like an extension of both the heart and the hand.   This is also characterized by the imprint floating on a dark blue finished off with light strokes of white, here also the connection between the imprint and the periphery of the painting is stitched by the borders of the imprint, but in no way is it a clash of statements, it is rather two surfaces telling the narrative of melancholy and discovery or rediscovery.

When the writer states that the pieces are about discovery or rediscovery, alludes to the process of the art works, how they differ is how they are connected, both through the depth or the layers of the piece, but also through the finished touch, where two spaces in a piece are rendered in different shades, but in no way are they oppositional. That even the viewer is forced when looking for dimensions in the work to glean or discern the folds and lines depending on which section of the exhibition one is exploring.

Most striking are the collage pieces, bold and multidimensional, but also rendered with an elusive delicacy that also requires one to find meaning in the border, the folds and lines of the pieces. This is the case with the collage piece with the canvas framed on a board rectangular in shape, this is one is comprised of pieces of discarded cloth, stitched together on blue background, it is multicoloured and dramatic. Here the stitching is that which comprises the borders and folds of the piece, the colours are that which unfold the measure in the finishing touch where there is no clash between the pieces of cloth, where looking along the structure of the piece imbues it with freedom and the stasis of discovery. The narrative of unfolding is that which is characterized by how the piece adds a dimension to the facility of canvas, again in a measure where fabric is that which is an extension of the hand and the intuitiveness that is connoted by melancholy and the rediscovery that reused material can imbue the process of creation with but also the process of viewing as well.

The pieces that are rendered with the silk fabric on them are also imbued with a measure melancholy that is rather palpable and incapable of renouncing what is affective about them, that their individual or collective narratives are that which characterize the notion of unfolding in the piece, but their poetry, since the actual fabric is imprinted on the canvas, it is a palpable and emotional, motional narrative. For example in the piece with the navy fabric, the dripping line of the paint and of the fabric as well are that which capture the extension of moments, but the creases of the fabric and their delicacy are that which rendered it elusive and individualistic, in the sense that to search or discovery is something that is given, that the white lines on the blue are signs that to search is to rediscover old paths, but no crease is the same, no stitch and no material is infallible.

Some of the pieces with the fabric resemble landscapes, as if the artist was thinking or feeling of ‘other’ spaces where melancholy and discovery are possible, for example the piece with the green silk is rendered in the moss green that resembles certain seashores, or certain hills. It is also multidimensional and emotive, where what is unfolding is not just what concerns being, but how being occupies the spaces between the searching and discovery, but also her or his dependency on individual expression. Where it is not just about the moment in the now, but what has been accrued by her or him. That boldness that the silk is rendered with is not lacking any delicacy but it is not lacking any assurance, both of searching and that rediscovery is itself filled with a measure of memory.