AIKO TEZUKA

EUR 15,000 + VAT

Mutterkuchen – 04 (Circulation), 2019

Embroidery and knitted basket with unravelled readymade fabric, wooden frame

178 x 71 cm (frame size 65 x 39 cm)

About this work

Here Tezuka knits the unravelled threads into a basket so that a structure collapses yet attempts to contain itself.  ‘Mutterkuchen means ‘placenta’ in German’, explains Tezuka, ‘but Mutter means mother and Kuchen means cake, so mother-cake means placenta in German’. She felt she ‘had to use the word’ for this work though ‘it does not have a concrete connection of meaning’ – even so, you might say that a pregnant woman contains an aspect of herself.

AIKO TEZUKA BIOGRAPHY

Many post-modern painters have found ways to deconstruct the canvas: Aiko Tezuka, who studied painting, applies what she learned to textiles – from antique fabrics to fashion brands to her own designs. She fastidiously extracts threads from the fabrics, sometimes re-weaving them to both de-create and re-create the material’s structures and narratives. The appeal, Tezuka has explained, is to investigate ‘what makes up the surface’, ‘what things could I see behind the surface’ and ‘how could I embody these things behind the surface into my work’. Time, she says, could be one of those things, and the unravelling allows her to ‘figuratively reverse time while making the invisible time visible’.