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Jonas Piontek is a talented self-taught photographer, travel enthusiast, student and storm chaser from Grünberg, Hessen who currently based in Lich, Hesse, Germany.
To be human is to constantly strive, despite repeated failings, to ascend on the ladder, as we say, toward God, toward theosis – and to seek to raise oneself toward the heavenly in all things, in a…
Mixed media on paper
Patched indigo cotton textile with stitching in homespun natural fibre, on a stretcher covered in indigo cotton, circa 1850-1900 Dimensions: 164 x 164 cm (can be hung anyway up) Provenance: Gordon Reece collection Boro textiles were the traditional bedcovers and garments of poor rural communities of Northern Japan - the literal translation of ‘boro’ being rags. They were carefully constructed from salvaged pieces of second-hand cotton fabric bartered from sea faring merchants from the late- eighteenth, these examples are from the late nineteenth- and early-twentieth century. Cotton would have been a luxury for boro makers of the time and its inclusion is clearly prized. These fragments were pieced together with homespun bast fibre and are often reinforced using the traditional sashiko stitching that add a personal touch the compositions. Boros were subsequently worked on by each new generation that inherited them, often being several layers thick. Gordon Reece has been instrumental in the resurgence of interest in these artefacts of folk tradition. Similarly, to the rising appreciation of Gee’s Bend quilts in the US, Gordon Reece presents boro as artworks of necessity. Each textile has been painstakingly conserved and attached to an indigo stretcher, but nothing has been altered. Reece has collected these specific pieces for their large scale and their intactness but mainly for their aesthetic qualities - lively designs, methodical designs and expressive designs. It is hard for Western audiences not to view these pieces through the lens of post-war art, including the work of Kurt Schwitters, Antoni Tapies, Robert Rauschenberg and Alberto Burri. Further, a growing interest in ‘outsider’ art has helped us appreciate the unsung and untrained artists of the past and present. Although it might be anachronistic to label the boro as art, it would be wrong to think that their construction was not guided by an inherently human creativity. Only a small number of genuine historical examples have survived because of the shame felt by their testament to rural poverty in Japan. In his pursuit of these piece Reece has been a pioneer, always on the look out for something unusual and unloved. This is the first time the collection have been publicly displayed in the UK since their inclusion in a groundbreaking exhibition on the subject - Boro: Threads of Life - in 2014 at Somerset House.
