Nick Cave with his Button drapery fabric.
Photo: Knoll Textiles
Nick Cave’s Vibrant Artworks Inspire a Museum Exhibition and Sumptuous Collection of Textiles
The acclaimed Chicago artist opens a retrospective at the Guggenheim and launches a new collaboration with Knoll Textiles
The Forest wall covering pattern is directly influenced by Cave’s 2011 installation Architectural Forest. Photo: knoll textiles
“I see all decisions as creative ones, whether they are made for a museum, the body, or to embellish a room,” says artist Nick Cave, who also serves as a professor in the Fashion, Body, and Garment program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This week, Cave will be celebrated in the retrospective “Nick Cave: Forothermore,” at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and is also marking the recent release of a highly anticipated fabric collection with Knoll Textiles.
The sweeping retrospective, which originated at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA), was curated by Naomi Beckwith, now Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Guggenheim; Jack Schneider, Curatorial Assistant at MCA; and X Zhu-Nowell, Assistant Curator at the Guggenheim. On view starting November 18, the exhibition features sculptures, installations, video, and early works that illustrate Cave’s passion for fiber carefully combined with found objects and cast-offs. The three-part installation inside the museum’s tower galleries includes What It Was, What It Is and What It Shall Be, which highlights the past, present, and future chapters of the artist’s prolific career.
Originally conceived in response to the beating and racial profiling of Rodney King in 1991, Cave’s signature Soundsuits have become symbolic in the way they address issues of gender, race, and class while concealing the wearer’s identity, serving as a second skin. The decorative forms are reminiscent of ceremonial or carnival costumes, produced from a range of discarded and tactile materials like sequins, feathers, plastic, synthetic hair, and beads. To exist inside these garments, one must balance both the physical and emotional weight and be ready to move.
Nick Cave, Garden Plot (aka Wall Relief), 2013. Steel, found textiles, and found ceramic, glass, and metal objects, with beads. Photo: Courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. © Nick Cave. Photo: James Prinz
In the last decade, the 63-year-old Chicago talent has produced numerous projects featuring these wearable Soundsuits sculptures. These larger-than-life installations are the embodiment of an artistic practice that spans fashion, performance, dance, and the body politic. Highlights include; Each One, Every One, Equal All, a trio of mosaic murals installed in the Times Square-Bryant Park Subway Stations; The Let Go, a performance incorporating dance raves at the Park Avenue Armory from 2018; and Heard-NY, an art commission with Creative Time staged in Grand Central Station in 2013, all of which have now inspired a new fabric range.
“The thought process is similar for all types of projects,” Cave says when describing his partnership with Knoll Textiles. “But, the key difference between my art practice and the Knoll collaboration is the starting point. My artwork begins with what’s happening in the world and what I find as I move through it. But for the Knoll line, I began with my artwork as the instigator,” he says about the impetus behind the artful range he envisioned for the legacy brand.
Big Floral, an oversized digital printed wall covering, is embellished with antique beading. Photo: Knoll Textiles
Nick Cave, Soundsuit, 2015. Mannequin, metal, synthetic hair, and found textiles. Photo: Collection of Ashley and Pam Netzky. © Nick Cave
“The Knoll collection is another way for people to access my art and share energy,”
Nick Cave
Doily upholstery in Twilight (left) with Guise upholstery in Indigo (below). Photo: knoll textiles
The Nick Cave Collection for Knoll Textiles encompasses ten patterns that launched the end of October. “The textiles do make a direct reference to his artwork,” says Mary Murphy, Senior Vice President of Design for Knoll Textiles, Maharam, and Edelman Leather. “You can see the interpretations are true to his intent,” she says, adding, “Color was key.” Bob Faust, who is Cave’s partner in life and art, also played a role in the process.
The four upholstery, three drapery, and three wall covering patterns directly reference craft and decorative elements from Cave’s Soundsuits. “The essence of the collection is all about technique,” Murphy says while emphasizing the weaving process of Doily, a woven jacquard that’s embroidered using a special machine. Heard, an unusual drapery fabric is composed of five ribbon colors, handmade and intricately sewn. “It’s going to be used sparingly,” Murphy adds. Button, a digital print with an overall pattern fades from light to dark, while Big Floral, a large-scale digitally embossed wallpaper accentuates antique beaded flowers, a detail from another Soundsuits. Cave sums it up best: “The collection is another way for people to access my art and share energy.”
Cover: Nick Cave with his Button drapery fabric.
Photo: Knoll Textiles
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