Portal, 2011
wool, ash, acid dyes, 80 x 90 inches
on view at Thierry Goldberg Gallery (until January 15, 2012)

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Featured for the first time earlier this year, the woollen carpets corroded by acid from ANNA BETBEZE are currently on view at Thierry Goldberg Gallery in New York during the group exhibition Tailgates & Substitutes until January 15, 2012.

I first saw flokati rugs traveling in Greece when I was 19, now they are everywhere. I love that the flokati is a form that is both ancient and modern. These rugs have been made since the 3rd century. The density of the organic wool allows for a saturation of color, a sedimentary, layered residual mark, that can at once reference the mark of Impressionist painting and dyed punk hair. It is actually a very malleable material full of possibility. The soft white wool seemed prefect ground to spill, stain, and defile.

Objects, works of art, have the ability to change on you—to change form, to be at once playful and violent, to be at once beautiful and abject. These tensions create an active presence. Presence is the most important thing about the work, even if it is a presence of absence. – ANNA BETBEZE for The L Magazine