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Creating A Rainbow With 60 Miles Of Thread


by Hady Mawajdeh 18 Jul 2016 8:59 AM

Dallas Based Artist Gabriel Dawe Creates Visual Interpretations Of Light With Miles and Miles of Thread. His Next Piece Will Be On Display At The Amon Carter Museum In Fort Worth.

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Dallas based artist Gabriel Dawe has been commissioned by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth to create yet another “indoor rainbow” for the museum’s atrium.

The piece is titled “Plexus no. 34” and like previous works “Plexus no. 34” will be an extremely intricate network of threads that give depth to light.

Over the past decade, Dawe has been granted an Artist Residency with CentralTrak; been commissioned to create works in Miami, Houston, San Diego, Toronto, and several other places and he’s been singled out as an artist to watch by the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.

The spotlight is fitting for an artist that is obsessed with the visual spectrum of light.

Artist Gabriel Dawe creating one of his threaded scultures. Photo: Amon Carter Museum of American Art

Artist Gabriel Dawe creating one of his threaded sculptures.
Photo: Amon Carter Museum of American Art

Dawe makes large sculptures with thread. He uses miles upon miles of stretched thread to create geometric shapes that hang from the ceilings of show spaces and they give the viewer a sense of what it’s like to stare into a rainbow.

Dawe told Art&Seek in 2014 that he thinks the sculptures almost look like they’re coming alive when you see them and move around the space that they’re in.

“It’s almost like the piece is kinetic art, even though it doesn’t move,” Dawe said about “Plexus” the sculpture he created at 2100 Ross, in Dallas.

 

 

Dawe is quoted in a press release announcing the commission at the Amon Carter that his goal is to “materialize light, to give it density, so that I can offer the viewer an approximation of things otherwise inaccessible to us—a glimmer of hope that brings us closer to the transcendent.”

“Plexus no. 34” will be created onsite and will be open for viewing on August 16, 2016 through September 2, 2018.

Artist Gabriel Dawe.

Artist Gabriel Dawe. Photo: Amon Carter Museum of American Art

“Once the artwork is installed, it will look as if Gabriel created a natural phenomenon of rainbow light and mist in the Atrium,” says assistant curator Maggie Adler. “A rainbow is nature’s way of drawing our attention to the everyday beauty around us, and Gabriel has constructed one for us,” she says. “So often, we forget to stop, to let wonder overtake us. We hope our visitors will take the time to pause, look up and soak in this ethereal work.”

If you’d like to know more about Dawe and his work then be sure to check out the video he did with Art&Seek in 2014 (below).

 

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