Artist Joe Karlovec (b. 1986, Columbus, OH) lives and works in south Florida. He received his BFA in Interior Architecture from the Cleveland Institute of Art and briefly studied Landscape Architecture at the Knowlton School of Architecture at Ohio State University before receiving an MFA in Painting from Kent State University. His interest and background in architecture, painting and landscape architecture inspires his recent body of work, which consists of 12 large-scale textile installations featuring photographic details of architectural spaces, landscapes and paintings. As Karlovec states, “I make textiles about landscape urbanism and postmodern architecture.” Using a jacquard loom, Karlovec is able to weave his photographic images into textiles. He then hand cuts his fiber imagery and reconstructs them into multi-layered fiber collages that seemingly undulate with a maze of interiors, facades and outdoor areas that form a large and winding, visually stunning space – albeit some of the objects and spaces often contradict one another. Beckoned by the towering scale of the textiles to explore the picture plane, the viewer may find themselves considering their own relationships with the places in which they live and work, as well as their surrounding environments.
With the past year having been speckled with quarantines and lockdowns, we’ve all been made very aware of our surroundings at home and the ways in which we utilize and interact with our interior and exterior spaces. We are creatures of habit, and we tend to overlook settings that are familiar to us, keeping visual records of them in our minds. We get used to the arrangement of our decor and the ways in which our spaces are situated and tend to leave them unchanged for long spans of time. But how many of us decided to redecorate or rearrange rooms in our homes while confined to them for over the course of a year? Close examination of and focus on the aesthetics of personal space and property and how it can be adapted and readapted to accommodate our physical and emotional needs is a key component of Karlovec’s work. His textile installations are intended to be reconstructed into new formations whenever the artist sees fit. Designed with flexibility in mind, the installations are not meant to remain static and can be changed into entirely new compositions, arguably making the work sustainable as “new” for years to come.
installation shots:
© 2016 Franklin G. Burroughs • Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum
Myrtle Beach’s Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum strives to be one of the finest visual arts museums in the Carolinas. With 11 galleries that change throughout the year, Myrtle Beach’s only art museum offers exhibitions featuring paintings, textiles, sculpture, photography, video, ceramics, assemblage, collage and more. A visit to the Art Museum’s exhibitions can be enhanced by its lively programming, including artist receptions, tours, lectures, workshops and classes for both adults and children.
