Lemberg Gallery
Through November 10, 2007.

The smell of paint coupled with dim lighting (unusually so for a white-walled gallery space) establishes a slightly unsettling atmosphere, and upon entering the gallery, viewers are confronted by sculptural forms, masses of coiled rope occupying human scale rising up from and covering the floor. The room is filled to overflowing with the squat, elongated, and tall rope masses, which leave but narrow patches of exposed concrete to tip toe in between them. Marks on the walls intentionally left (or placed) by the installation of the ropes display their scale in this confined space. The forms become not so much a collection of objects as landscape, perhaps subterranean in nature – it could be the interior of the cave filled with stalagmites (and perhaps rope from the ceiling could complete the image?) It’s altogether alien, yet quite familiar.

It’s knitting.

And crocheting. Orly Genger transforms techniques used to make coverings for our bodies into objects in their own right, and currently at Lemberg Gallery, into environment. Using a variety of heavy nylon climbing ropes, the artist loops them together to create rectangular patches like oversized knit scarves. These flat sections are then folded upon themselves, building up, layer upon layer, into dense, textured objects with enough ambiguity to invite multiple readings and invite questions about their nature.

Though made of such soft materials, the ropes become something quite substantial and imposing. That they’re done by hand is a testament to the physicality of the artist, which ties into the title, “Posedown,” a reference to the striking of a pose at body building competitions. In the gallery office, Genger displays a few drawings of this idea – a heap of muscular, superhero arms, all woven together in a similar manner as the ropes. It’s clever, smart, and fun. Additionally, we’re told that the forms of the installation are all based on the shapes of different muscles. That such an idea provides a springboard for conceiving these things is interesting, but that knowledge doesn’t add a lot to the viewer’s experience. Rather it’s the fascination with her process, their sheer presence coupled with their ambiguity that makes for a compelling experience and for this to be a rich vein of exploration for Genger.

There are literal veins to be explored, as the buildup of knit layers form a definite sort of strata in a definite geological sense. While the forms and the installation do suggest something organic, almost human, we can see these as boulders, ridges, mesas. Genger not only flips the idea of knitting on its side, but turns the ropes that allow us to climb mountains and cliffs into representations of those very forms. Visually, the work offers a lot for the eye, even as their presence is something to be touched or felt. There is strong movement throughout the arrangement of the forms as a whole and within each individual one. We can scale the strata, move through the work, explore the complexity of the individual layers, again like veins of mineral deposits. We follow the weave, finding moments to take rest, grab handholds, and others where we climb rapidly along the work.

Color plays a role in the visual experience too. Despite being painted a somewhat uniform black, the ropes – red, blue, orange, and more, of varying thickness and type, upon closer inspection, the ropes’ underlying colors come through in places where one loop of rope wraps around another. This adds to the geological metaphor, as in cleaving through the outer surface of earth, we find beneath it a rich spectrum of color in the different types of rock and mineral deposits below. These layers of earth hold stories as to their origins bound in pressure and heat and as to what once walked upon them when they were at the surface, and we can imagine such stories told in this giant knitting. The creation of such fabric brings to mind storytellers both mythological and real, weaving yarns about our lives, or perhaps tapestries, or further metaphors still – perhaps the looped rope can be seen as strands of DNA – the very fabric of our lives, all ideas that ravel together in contemplating the work.

Genger constructs an experience that is as thoroughly engaging aesthetically as it thought provoking conceptually. It’s great that Lemberg opened their space to be transformed in such a way, offering a quite different sort of encounter with art for this community. It’s something to behold and Genger’s approach is also sure to provoke ideas in others as to how to go about their own art making. Don’t miss it. – Nick Sousanis
ws@thedetroiter.com