The project is the brainchild of West Flemish carpet manufacturer cum gallery owner Mark Deweer, who wanted to combine his two passions. He invited well-known local and international artists, including Flanders' Koen Vanmechelen, Germany's Günther Förg and the Russian-born Ilya Kabakov, to come up with designs that would be woven on his factory looms.
Deweer is "someone who can push back frontiers, who can turn a conservative way of looking at things into a radical new world view," according to Flemish artist and curator Jan Hoet. To realise some of the 32 new designs, Deweer had to invent brand new weaving techniques.
"For a long time, I didn't want to link these two worlds," says Deweer in his introduction to the exhibition catalogue. The factory was developed in the late 1960s with his brother Dirk from their father's textile company into the rug factory Deweer-Assur Carpets. Deweer opened the gallery, which was one of the first in Belgium to present artists such as David Hockney, Tom Wesselmann and Allen Jones, just
over a decade later with his wife Marleen. The factory and gallery, both based in Deweer's home town of Otegem, a municipality of Zwevegem (about 15 kilometres east of Kortrijk), were to him separate spheres.
But when the family factory hit difficulties due to the economic pressures of globalisation, Deweer decided to close it down, and he realised that it was "now or never" if he was ever going to unite his two worlds. "I wanted to finish the era of the carpet factory with a flourish. A project with the artists from the gallery could sweeten the pill somewhat and make me forget for a while about the closure," he writes.
The project was realised, and the last carpet came off the loom in 2006. The company then closed its doors, and the machines were disassembled. As to why it has taken more than four years to launch Art of the Loom, exhibition book editor Max Borka simply puts it down to "Mark Deweer's now legendary modesty".
In the intervening years, some of the artists have exhibited their carpets elsewhere - French artist Matthieu Laurette turned "Applause (The Today Show)", pictured above, into a room-size installation at Art Brussels in 2005.
The exhibition is an intriguing look into contemporary art and choices: some artists created completely new works and some adapted previous works. For their ability to transfer well to textile? For their effect on a large scale? To look good on your floor?
Each piece is also often a perfect reflection of the artist: Koen Vanmechelen offers a simple black background topped by a giant head of a chicken; Panamarenko's is a reproduction of the poster from his seminal show in Ghent's SMAK; Jan Fabre's "Privy" has been adapted from his The Fountain of the World series, in which bodily fluids and genitalia get rather out of control.
The entire collection, which was on show at the Interieur 2010 Design Biennale last autumn in Kortrijk, can now be seen at the Deweer gallery. Many artists lent more than one design, and every carpet is for sale and comes with a certificate of authenticity that has been numbered, dated and signed by the artist, as well as a copy of the exhibition catalogue.
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