Rudolf Englert x Chloe Bensahel

Rudolf Englert x Chloe Bensahel
January 25 – March 4, 2024
Galerie Dittmar, Berlin

The exhibition on Rudolf Englert (1921-1989) and Chloe Bensahel (*1991) unites two positions that are related across time and independent of the different media. In addition to the visual proximity, based on the principle of sequencing, the reference to writing and music are fundamental elements in the work of both artists. The juxtaposition emphasises the simultaneously analytical and playful approach of both artists and enables a new way of perceiving their works through the visual relationship.

From the early 1960s, Rudolf Englert creates his innovative series of drawings in black ink. Despite all the discipline, the series have a free, individual expression and point the way for his future work. In their tendency to be related to the works of the ZERO artists, the drawings are highly independent. In the seventies, the compositions become more complex and pictorial in their design. The written character as well as the echoes of musical notation, which emerged early on, become clearer. Leading art historians already recognise Englert’s special position within the international avant-garde movements. Against the background of the re-evaluation of the image and the medium of paper in the 1970s, the significance of Rudolf Englert, who participates in this development in various ways, also becomes apparent.  “Nothing comes across as significant and it is precisely because of this that everything is detached from arbitrariness and becomes significant in the sense of a deliberately placed sign as an expression of a process… The viewer enters into a truly communicative dialogue of reflection, recognition and understanding.” (Dieter Krüger, Kunsthalle Osnabrück, 2005)

While Rudolf Englert significantly expands the concept of drawing, Chloe Bensahel’s works achieve a departure from a restrictive concept of textile art. By combining traditional techniques and materials with a conceptual approach and the latest technology, the artist addresses anthropological and aesthetic questions.

Chloe Bensahel’s group of works Text Tapestries (2016 – ongoing) explores the connection between text and textiles. The works are based on a traditional Japanese technique for repairing old textiles: the artist writes on handmade paper, which she then tears and twists into a thread. She weaves this thread together with other materials, mostly hemp or wool, to create a carpet. This idea is continued in Bensahel’s Interactive Tapestries (2019 – ongoing). In reference to the meaning of the text in Jewish religion, where the text, written exclusively in consonants, only becomes complete through the vowels spoken by the readers, the viewers form an integral part of the works. By weaving in conductive threads, sound or light sequences are activated once the carpets are touched; the works become performative resonating bodies. Emerging from the artist’s collaboration with Jacquard and the Google Arts & Culture Residency (2019), the group of work aims to establish touch as an independent form of cognition, in contrast to a primarily visual or cognitive reception.

Please find the essay accompanying this exhibition here.

Chloe Bensahel studied Integrated Design at Parsons the New School of Design in New York. After an internship at Studio Sheila Hicks, she learnt traditional weaving techniques at Studio Jun Tomita, Kyoto, and at the Australian Tapestry Workshop, Melbourne. In this context she was awarded the Irene Davies Emerging Tapestry Prize. Subsequent residency at the Mobilier National, Paris. 2020 Awarded the CADAF Liberty Art Prize, Paris; 2022 Awarded a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, Washington, D.C. Solo exhibitions at the French Embassy in Washington and the Australian Tapestry Workshop (both 2018). Group exhibitions at MOCA Marin, Novato, CA (2017); SF Design Week, San Francisco (2017, 2018); Institut Français, Melbourne (2019); Galerie des Gobelins, Paris (2021). Presentation of her work at Design Miami in December 2023 in preparation for her double residency at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and at Villa Albertine, Boston, March – May 2024. In November 2023 awarded the Prix des Amis du Palais du Tokyo, Paris; on this occasion a solo exhibition at the museum in spring 2024.

In 2012, Galerie Dittmar published an extensive catalogue on the work of Rudolf Englert. The re-edited catalogue Rudolf Englert (2022), containing a detailed and commented biography, is available at the gallery.